Women in North Korea: At the Forefront of Social and Political Change
By Lindsey Miller
Lindsey Miller is a musical director, award-winning composer, author, and photographer originally from Glasgow, Scotland. From 2017-2019, she lived in Pyongyang, North Korea, while accompanying her husband on a diplomatic posting. For Women’s History Month, she shares a rare glimpse into the experiences of North Korean women, who are finding ways to live life on their own terms despite the circumstances.
Her name is Min Jeong*.
She’s bright, funny and has a dry and cutting sense of humour that rivals that of any professional stand-up comedian. The kind that makes you worry for the heckler in the front row.
‘Why do you keep singing? You’re terrible at singing!’ she says with a straight face to the regular punters at The Beer House, a bar in Pyongyang, before taking their glass and kindly refilling it. ‘And don’t wear those shoes, they’re ugly.’ The other punters burst out laughing while Min Jeong allows a slight silly smile to make its way across the corner of her mouth. That’s the thing about Min Jeong, she has a magnetic and honest energy about her. It was refreshing in a place where simple honesty and truthfulness felt so packed down.
Min Jeong and I spent a fair bit of time together over the two years I lived in Pyongyang. I would go to the bar mainly to just talk to her and spend time with her. She was interesting. She loved hair accessories and jewellery – an increasingly common way for North Korean women to explore self-expression. I’d show her photographs of me and tell her about my different outfits while she’d rate them. I didn’t fare very well in her opinion. I often gave her my wedding or engagement ring to try on and she’d pose with them, comparing them to other things she’d seen foreigners wear. She’d tell me about the cosmetics that she liked to wear and make herself.
One of her favourite things was a face mask which I remember involving eggs. I never tried it but she swore by it, telling me how important it was to look after my skin and reminding me that there was nothing more important than my health. Min Jeong was very bright and regularly bounced between speaking in Korean, fluent English and often Mandarin. She loved animals and we spent a lot of time looking at photographs of dogs on our phones.
Min Jeong was in her early thirties and unmarried. She’d twirl her half-tied-back beautiful shiny black hair in her fingers while telling me about how much her parents were desperate for her to ‘find a boy’. She wasn’t interested and she didn’t have much time given that she only had one day ‘off’ a week which would have been taken up in part by state-enforced self-criticism sessions among other things. Having gone on many dates, the outcomes of which she summarised with a simple wrinkled nose, she seemed to be quite content being single. It was an attitude which I was surprised to learn was shared by a couple of Pyongyang female urban elite whom I met; women who spoke openly about their lack of desire to have children, who wanted to pursue a career. This directly contradicted my understanding of North Korean women’s experiences.
But I forgot that the experience of women is diverse and North Korea is no exception.
It’s very easy to think that North Korea isn’t changing but that is not the case. To say that there have been no social changes in the country would be insulting to the creativity, tenacity and drive of the North Korean people, particularly women who continue to be a major driving force of change. Driven by necessity following the devastating famine in the 90s, ordinary women had to become more economically independent in order to survive. While North Korean men were chained to jobs in faceless party offices, women had the time to create their own economic opportunities which could feed their families and keep them alive. Even now, in spite of living in a country gripped by widespread and pervasive human rights abuses including the most extreme forms of sexual and gender-based violence, women are often the breadwinners, women are the ones driving the private markets, women are the ones winning back more agency over their own lives and futures.
I only had to go to Tongil Market to see it for myself. Every vendor standing behind every one of the stalls laid out in long rows across the indoor market hall was a woman. Every staff member taking payments from the vendors for selling in the venue was a woman. The people counting the money in the cash exchange office were women. The people unloading sacks of vegetables and meat were women. Most of the customers were women.
Through having no choice but to fight to survive, North Korean women have driven changes that few could have predicted would last.
I sit at the bar and Min Jeong passes me a cup of black tea. She starts to scroll through her phone and goes back into her own world. I think about what is going through her mind and all the things she is experiencing but cannot talk about. I think about the millions of other North Korean women with names, voices and stories to tell; who we, on the outside of North Korea, will never get to meet. I think about the world who will never get to meet this generous, kind, extraordinary woman in front of me - my friend.
Min Jeong lifts her head and looks at me,
‘You really shouldn’t wear those shoes, Lindsey. They’re awful.’ She waits a moment and that same slight silly smile starts to creep across the corner of her mouth. ‘I’m kidding. They’re only a little better than yesterday’s.’
Lindsey Miller shares more extraordinary photos and stories from North Korea in her debut book, “North Korea: Like Nowhere Else," a testament to the hidden humanity and dynamism of the people. She also joined LiNK for a virtual Q&A in 2021 and continues to be a friend and advocate for this issue!
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*Name has been changed to protect the privacy and safety of the individual
North Korean Refugee Stories: Meet Yoon Suk
Yoon Suk has vivid, happy memories of growing up in North Korea. She was raised during a time when state-socialism was relatively functioning, and the government could provide basic necessities to its citizens. She remembers wearing beautiful nylon (a highly-sought after fabric back in the earlier days of North Korea) uniforms with bows and red, patent-leather shoes to school. She also had a passion for the arts and performed frequently on stage. But as she grew older, the shine in her shoes began to fade and the hunger in her belly began to grow.
After the collapse of the Soviet Union, North Korea lost crucial sources of subsidized trade and aid and the North Korean economy crashed. It was during this time that Yoon Suk got married, but what should have been a happy time in her life ended up being far from it. The regime’s mismanaged agricultural and environmental policies were confounded by harsh weather, plunging the country into a severe famine that lasted for years. Yoon Suk and her husband struggled to survive on the meager rations they received—and they were not alone. During this period, an estimated one million people died from starvation, while many of those who survived suffered immensely.
Yoon Suk, knowing that she had to do something to keep her family alive during the most difficult years of the “Arduous March,” turned to the jangmadang—small, illegal markets where people sold and traded anything they could for food. Yoon Suk was like many North Korean women in this new reality, abandoning her traditional role for market activities. Unfortunately, running her modest merchant business was more challenging than she had anticipated and she struggled to keep it afloat. As the situation grew worse, she discontinued her business and looked for other ways to support her family, which had grown by two with the birth of her sons. It was during this time that she learned that life might be better in booming China.
As recently as three decades ago, Chinese people were on average poorer than their North Korean neighbors. But China’s economic reforms have produced wealth and opportunities that are the envy of nearly all North Koreans today. Since North Korea’s economic collapse, which lead to unprecedented cross-border movement and inflows of Chinese goods and media, North Koreans have gained a painful awareness of just how far their formerly impoverished Chinese neighbors have come.
But it’s extremely risky for North Koreans to escape their country. The North Korean regime makes it illegal to leave without explicit permission and if Yoon Suk was caught trying to escape, or caught in China and sent back, she would be punished severely. Yet, the opportunity was too great to pass up and she fled for the first time in the mid-2000s.
Once she arrived, alone in a foreign country where she didn’t speak the language, Yoon Suk was sold to a Chinese man as his bride. China’s lack of marriageable women, particularly in rural areas of the northeast, creates high demand for female North Korean refugees like Yoon Suk. Without legal status and no protection from the authorities, these women are often kidnapped by sex traffickers and sold, sometimes for as little as $200.
Even though she was now living with a Chinese man, Yoon Suk still wasn’t safe from the watchful eye of the Chinese authorities. North Korean refugees’ well-founded fear of persecution if repatriated means that they should be protected under international refugee law. However, the Chinese government labels them as “economic migrants,” so they can forcibly send them back, as per their agreement with the North Korean regime. Yoon Suk was caught by Chinese police not even a month after arriving and was forcibly repatriated back to North Korea. There, the authorities sent her to a prison camp, where she was abused, beaten, and starved.
After all she had gone through, Yoon Suk was still undeterred from finding freedom outside of North Korea. She escaped again to China shortly after her release from the prison camp. She was sold off three times by traffickers, again under the pretense that she was going to be given work. With the last husband, she had her beautiful daughter.
Yoon Suk wanted to give her daughter a better life, and knew that would not be possible in China. Without the proper documentation, her daughter would have difficulty even going to school and would be denied the opportunities available to other Chinese children. Yoon Suk and her daughter escaped China together through Liberty in North Korea’s network and are now on their way to safety in South Korea.
Yoon Suk is excited for the life and opportunities that lie ahead of her. She’s a talented cook and wants to explore the option of obtaining a culinary certificate in South Korea. She also has high hopes for her daughter, who loves art just like her mother did as a young girl, and wants to enroll her in dance and painting lessons. Yoon Suk’s greatest wish is to reunite with her two adult sons someday. She often dreams about appearing on TV to send a message to her sons, showing them she’s alive and well.
Thank you for helping supply the funds for Yoon Suk’s rescue. Your efforts have changed her life and have provided the opportunity for her to enjoy her new LIBERTY.
Fundraise or donate to help rescue more North Korean refugees today!
