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This August, we submitted our annual written contributions on the human rights experiences of North Korean women - in their home country, in China as migrants, and in South Korea as hopeful compatriots. And, like in previous years, we had little progress to report on; in fact, in some respects there has been a regression in the status of defector women in China and South Korea. One constant, however, remains unchanged - North Korean women's determination to survive and 'dream of freedom'.
This is the first installment of a three-part email series discussing the journey of North Korean women from tyranny to liberty, mapping their impossible resilience at each perilous step in their voyage. We draw from our report, 'Daring to Even Dream of Freedom', which we published earlier this year.
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"I didn't know I was hungry until I was eight years old"...
...revealed Gyuri Kang to a captivated audience at the United States General Assembly in New York in May 2025. These words may seem confounding to many of us who have grown up in developed countries and relative privilege. How can someone not know they are hungry? The answer, though harrowing, is straightforward: North Korea is a culture of starvation and deprivation. For people like Gyuri, the feeling of hunger knew no name, it was just a persistent state of being; it did not come and go, it stayed. She had never known otherwise. But before she even turned ten years old, she made a sobering realization that the life she and her family lived couldn't be reasonable, couldn't be normal. The emaciated corpses of her neighbors foreshadowed a terrifying future she couldn't accept.
At such a young age, however, she lacked the ability to make such a daunting decision about what to do next. Fortunately, her sentiment was shared by her mother, who resolved that she would "rather get shot crossing the Tumen River than starve in North Korea". Courageously, Gyuri's mother orchestrated an escape to China for herself and her two daughters. But the years between the family's breakaway when Gyuri was just a child, and her standing as a bright young woman in front of the UN General Assembly were fraught with other obstacles in migrating through China and resettling in South Korea. We will cover some of these experiences in our upcoming emails.
For now, let's focus on The Hermit Kingdom.
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The few legislations which purport to offer protections to women in North Korea in reality pay lip service to the concept of gender equality. For example, the 1972 Constitution grants women "social status and rights" on par with male citizens, but excludes the predecessor 1948 Constitution's references to the "government, political, economic, social, and cultural spheres" in which equal rights can be enjoyed.
Meanwhile, policies which superficially appear to promote the empowerment of women in reality reinforce expectations on them. For example, the extension of maternity leave in 2015 served less to provide working women with much-needed postnatal rest and moreso encouraged women to have more children even though they can barely keep themselves fed. Likewise, the Land Reform Law, which granted women land ownership rights, was just another policy imposing labor and agricultural production expectations on women to counteract the nation's dwindling population; their husbands, legally bound to state jobs, are unable to participate in farming, leaving the responsibility to their already overburdened wives.
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"Spouting all this ridiculous propaganda..."
...in feigned ignorance of our suffering", was one civilian's criticisms of the Women's Union's claims that women in North Korea enjoy "precious lives of happiness". Many other women echoed the same sentiment, questioning how mothers can be happy when their children are "growing even more emaciated". The Women's Union, the government organ responsible for protecting and promoting the rights of women, has been derided by defector women as being nothing more than a tool of "social control and material coercion". Its most common activities include monitoring women’s economic activity and confiscating ‘surplus’ income, seizing foodstuffs and daily necessities, and mobilizing women to participate in backbreaking labor for Kim’s endless socialist projects.
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Translation: "Let's massively expand fish farming throughout the entire country!"
Image by jennybento on Flickr (CC BY-SA 2.0)
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One crucial medium of propaganda is the Union's monthly magazine, Joseon Nyosong (Korean Woman), which has, over the course of many decades, fashioned the image of a dutiful ‘Korean Woman’ as one who makes personal sacrifices and contributions at their own expense to further the socialist ambitions of the nation. One such 'glorious martyrdom', lauded by officials at the 8th Congress of the Women's Union last month, was mothers' 'willingness' to send their children to fight on the frontlines of the Russia-Ukraine War.
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"It is the only way to survive"...
...Said one man of his wife's work as a trader in the network of illicit and clandestine marketplaces, called the jangmadang. Here, women sell raw goods - rice, cornmeal - and value-added goods such as homemade alcohol and mended clothing; as their husbands are bound to state-mandated jobs that pay a pittance, it is incumbent upon wives to partake in the jangmadang to put food on the table.
But operating in these illegal markets is not without its risks. The aforementioned husband of a jangmadang worker expounded on how powerless his wife is - and by extension, he is - against abuses that take place in the marketplaces:
“Corruption is so rampant that anybody without power has no choice. Female traders like my wife, workers, and especially women in prison must do anything their superiors, like police, party officials, investigators, or guards ask them to do. Agreeing to whatever request will be followed by potential benefits, and denial by certain loss and unknown retribution. Traders like my wife have to accept that sexual coercion [by men in power] is part of social and market dynamics. It is the only way to survive.”
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Female vendors often pay hefty bribes to government officials in exchange for their secrecy, and women must meticulously curate collegiate relationships with peers to ensure that petty grievances do not lead to vengeful accusations, which would in turn draw scrutiny from the police. Jangmadang workers who are caught selling the most prohibited contraband - thumb drives with South Korean and American media and music - walk a thin tightrope to avoid arrest. The Transitional Justice Working Group, in its analysis of death sentences in North Korea between January 2020 and December 2024, observed some specific jangmadang activities which were grounds for execution: “importing and distributing South Korean video contents”; “editing and distributing South Korean and other foreign video materials”; “introducing and distributing foreign-produced electronic devices in the military”. This media has been cited by defectors as a contributing factor of their decision to defect North Korea. Seeing television dramas depicting wealth, freedom, romance, and reckless abandon in other countries effectively discredits the Kim government's propaganda that life beyond North Korea is inhospitable. Defectors recall being driven to escape the clutches of tyranny in search of the agency they see characters enjoy in foreign television.
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"Betraying the Motherland"...
...is the charge that repatriated defectors face if they are repatriated to North Korea after escape. Forced repatriation, though illegal per the 1951 Refugee Convention, is a common practice by the Chinese government, which sees North Koreans as economic migrants and expeditiously rounds them up and deports them without consideration to their unique circumstances.
Much like the customers who are encouraged to escape by the K-dramas they purchase from market saleswomen, many North Korean women themselves make the ultimate decision to defect after months or years of interaction with foreign individuals, items, and ideas in their cross-border smuggling. For decades, North Korean women comprise the overwhelming majority of defectors, and inherently, they face the most brutal repercussions when they are either caught trying to escape or are forcibly returned.
Female repatriates who were sold into marriage with Chinese men and have become pregnant as a result may be subjected to forced abortions or violence inflicted by state actors with deliberate intent to cause miscarriages. In instances where defector women have reached full gestation, their newborns may be delivered but killed immediately thereafter. NKDB recorded 440 forced abortions and 77 infanticides committed against women defectors with the revolting intention “to prevent future re-defections and uphold the regime’s ideology of ethnic purity”.
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Just last month, during the 8th Congress of the Women's Union, Kim Jong Un spoke to a room full of urbanite women, saying "Having a powerful patriotic group of women is our party's greatest pride and our state's greatest strength". For the North Korean women in the rural regions who toil day and night to merely get by, these words of appreciation and admiration ring hollow.
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