Love and Dating ... in North Korea
This updated version of Love & Sex in North Korea was originally written by LiNK for Koreaboo.
According to historians who are really good at remembering when things happened in the olden days, sex and love existed before the Internet was even invented. Before 56K dial-up, phones, and even Tinder, humans found ways to interact completely offline and engage in sexual activity. In fact, biologists believe that the human proclivity for sex is universal and plays a major role in producing baby humans, thereby maintaining the human race’s existence. (Go humans!)
So could it be that in North Korea too, people have sex and fall in love and do romantic things with each other?
According to North Korean refugees that I’ve worked with, the answer is: Yes. North Koreans have sex too.
So, how do North Koreans do it?
First of all, the baseline to understand is that overall North Korean dating culture is pretty traditional and conservative. Think South Korea, but 50 years ago. One of the reasons for this is, well, North Korean society is quite conservative and patriarchal in general and North Korean media is super old-fashioned. In North Korean films you don’t see couples kissing or being physically affectionate with each other, so many North Koreans are just not used to PDA and wouldn’t dream of being too affectionate or kissing in public.
Nonetheless North Koreans do meet and date and fall in love like everywhere else. A lot of it starts in school (awww) and people also meet at dances or house parties. That’s right, when the parents are out of town young urban North Koreans will often invite a bunch of friends over and have a party. Once ‘the eyes have met’ the boy often has to do a lot of the pursuing. And guys, spare a thought for our brothers there: Only about 10% of North Koreans have a mobile phone. So for most, it has to be done the old fashioned way.
Either you have to pre-arrange to meet ‘10 trees away from the school gate at 7pm on Wednesday’ or you have to take the risk of going to their house. The danger, of course, is that you knock on the door and their mother answers, causing all that (traditional Asian) embarrassment. So a common trick is to knock and wait for someone to call out “Who is it?” If it’s the mother you say “I’ve come for Eun-kyung” (even though your girlfriend’s name is something else) and pretend you got the wrong house. If your girlfriend answers, then you can say, “It’s me! Come out!” Nicely done.
Finding a place to date isn’t so hard; people hang out in the park, or by the river, or around the market. But it’s when you need a bit more privacy that things get more difficult. The vast majority of young North Koreans live in their parents house until they get married (even more so than South Koreans) so there is no privacy at home. So when the relationship heats up, young couples will often go to the North Korean equivalent of a love motel, which is basically paying a middle-aged women to clear out of their own house for a few hours so the couple can get it on. A more risky space for a frisson might be a storage room with an unlocked door, or even a train toilet.
However, there’s a problem here...well, a few in fact. Sex education is almost non-existent in North Korea. And contraceptive pills and condoms can be hard to come by, too (you can’t just stop by the closest 24-hour convenience store). I have a friend who used to smuggle goods from China to sell in North Korea, and she says she saw a pregnancy test for the first time in 2007. She of course promptly smuggled some in to sell to North Korean women. This combination of factors unfortunately leads to a lot of unplanned pregnancies and risky abortions amongst unmarried women.
Like other aspects of North Korean culture, dating culture is not static. And as with other social changes, one of the major drivers is the influx of foreign media being smuggled in on DVDs and USB drives, and now even Micro-SD cards. In fact, one of the reasons South Korean dramas and films are so popular is because, in contrast to North Korean government-produced films, they show compelling human stories of love and relationships, and have addictive plotlines. If all you had access to was government propaganda your whole life and then suddenly you heard that your friends had access to this amazing new foreign stuff, you might risk watching it too.
In the first few viewings, these simple South Korean soaps can be revelatory: The PDA, the attitudes of the female characters, even the way they talk and dress. The love story in the Korean drama Winter Sonata, which is credited with starting the Korean Wave across Asia, is still remembered fondly by many North Korean refugees.
Similarly when My Sassy Girl was smuggled in many young women who watched it were driven to imitate not just Jeon Ji-hyun’s fashion and hairstyle, but also the confident and cool way in which her character treats her boyfriend. (And of course in the background of these films and dramas, North Korean viewers can’t help but notice that South Korea looks way richer than North Korea). These information changes are confounding economic changes in their effects on gender relations, as bottom-up marketization has raised the status of women as they play a key role in illegal and semi-legal entrepreneurial business activities.
Humans being humans, porn is also being smuggled into North Korea. And without getting too PG-13, it would be fair to assume that this also opens up and accelerates changes in behaviour between the sheets as well.
It’s worth noting that despite a big growth in flows of foreign media over the last 10 years it is still limited, and especially in the countryside and in the interior of the country away from the border with China, people have much less access (if at all). So there is huge regional variation in North Korea and dating culture will still be very traditional and conservative in the countryside, whilst changing rather quickly in Pyongyang and other major cities and border towns. In addition, young Pyongyangites also mostly have mobile phones now, meaning fewer nervous knocks on doors.
Because of the government’s ongoing restrictions on culture and extreme paranoia over foreign media, North Korea was late to the sexual revolution. But it is now happening, and it is no trivial matter. The emulation of dating culture learned through South Korean and other foreign media, particularly among young urban North Koreans, is contributing to increased sensitivity to foreign trends and a liberalization and modernization of culture and society from the bottom up. And in the long run, it’s this kind of social change that will help usher in a wider transformation and opening of North Korean society, to the benefit of the North Korean people and humanity as a whole.
--SOKEEL PARK - director of research and strategy
Challenges of Freedom
Four North Korean defectors' experiences of resettling to South Korea.
It was the greatest country in the world. Sure, sometimes they saw people die from starvation and heard rumors of people disappearing into prison camps, but it was like that everywhere. At least that’s what they were told. But as foreign media started to spill into the country, they realized it wasn’t like that everywhere; they weren’t living in the greatest country in the world. A better life was out there and they knew they needed to leave to find it.
Every year, many North Koreans risk their lives to escape one of the world’s most oppressive regimes. They trek through jungles and over mountains, terrified of being caught and sent back. Once they finally reach freedom, they start over. New cultures, new opportunities, new challenges.
Here are four of their stories.
Ill Yong
Ill Yong opens Google Maps, trying to find a satellite image of his childhood house. This always makes him homesick. When he zooms in on his house, a blurry gray square surrounded by snow, he remembers the nearby waterfall and the summer days he spent playing there. But he also remembers how hard it was living in North Korea. His family listened to illegal South Korean radio every night but had to keep it hidden from friends and neighbors. If caught, they could have been sent to a political prison camp or even executed.
Ill Yong resettled to South Korea in 2009 and, even though his family was with him, starting over in a new country was challenging. The everyday moments took adjusting to. His first time at a buffet, Ill Yong was so overwhelmed by the massive amount of food that he just took a small bowl of rice. The first time he tried to use an escalator he was so confused about what to do that he jumped on at the bottom and then jumped off at the top. Ill Yong has now been in South Korea for nine years and is studying to become a Human Rights lawyer. A lot has changed since he first arrived (he now knows how to get on an escalator) but he still thinks about his old home in North Korea and hopes to see it again in person one day.
Noel
Noel came to South Korea in 2010 with a shy personality and a strong North Korean accent. She wanted to blend quietly into her new culture, but people constantly asked where she was from. School was also a struggle. In North Korea, she had dropped out after the first grade to stay home and help her mother. What she did learn at school was of little help in her new life. She was used to curriculum that focused on the Kim family. Determined to catch up, she began reading lots of books.
Noel is currently studying to become a writer and is no longer behind in school. Her new challenge is figuring out what to do with her freedom. Living in North Korea, she just followed the regime and did whatever she was told. It was the only option. Now, faced with endless choices, she knows that there is a responsibility that comes with freedom, and she wants to use it wisely.
Jessie
Jessie was overwhelmed. She was by herself in an unfamiliar country. So much was unknown: how to get around, where to study, how to make new friends, and even where to buy groceries. She wasn’t used to this new culture’s rules and norms. The first time she heard someone publicly criticize the South Korean president she was stunned. Freely expressing any negative thoughts about the regime was unheard of in North Korea.
Jessie now understands her new culture and loves her freedoms, especially being able to watch whatever dramas she wants without fear of punishment. South Korea has become her home, but she still longs for the day she can return to North Korea. Her parents have both passed away and she wants to go and pay her respects in person.
Geum Hyok
Geum Hyok stood by himself in an empty apartment wondering if he made a mistake. He had no friends and no family there to reassure him. Feeling lonely but determined to make a life for himself, he started classes at Korea University where he met people who were kind to him and checked on him regularly. Their friendship helped him not feel as lonely. Except for the couple times he was turned down for a job because they didn’t want to hire a North Korean, most people were welcoming to him. But what surprised him most was how many South Koreans didn’t know what was happening in North Korea. Geum Hyok didn’t blame them, he knew humans rights was complicated. But it was still disappointing.
Now, Geum Hyok is studying politics and diplomacy and enjoys having the freedom to do what he wants. He no longer questions his choice to escape but he does think about his loved ones still in North Korea. He especially misses his mother whom he hasn’t seen or spoken to in eight years. He is waiting for the day North Korea finally opens so they can be reunited.
