This paper aims to examine North Korean gender roles and changes
in women in the process of the social transition under the military-first
politics and the economic crisis after the mid 1990s―focusing on gender
roles by the military regime and the women’s behaviours/minds as well
as their economic activities as the major source of the peoples’ survival
basing on family and changes of the society from below. The main
contents of each chapter are as follows: prior studies and survey method
as a qualitative study, gender roles in the military-first era, warriors for
survival doing family’s support and societies’ maintaining, strong viability
and effect of private property, changing of the traditional gender role and
consciousness, and then market economy and woman in conclusion.
According to this study, women awareness of gender roles and the
hierarchical order, constituted by the political authority, have begun to be
reconstituted by the economic activity and change of their mind/
behaviour. The change in women’s ideas and behaviours often cause a
crack in the hierarchical order between men and women in North Korea.
Meanwhile, they are rapidly merchandising. In particular, the “sex
business”/human trafficking of women have been on the increase.
Therefore, North Korean militarist system and market economy from
below provides women with both the light and the darkness in the
process of the social transition under the military-first politics and the
economic crisis after the mid 1990s.
