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The Neglected North Korean Crisis: Women's Rights

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 May 2021

Sea Young Kim  and
Leif-Eric Easley
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Abstract

North Korea references gender equality in its socialist constitution, but the de facto social and legal circumstances that women face in the country are far below the de jure status they are purported to enjoy. North Korean women endure extremely low public health standards and pervasive harassment. Yet their growing market power and social influence are underestimated. Women account for the majority of North Korean border crossers, and their informal economic activities are supporting families while modernizing the economy. This essay examines the dangers of exploitation that North Korean women face and highlights the ethical and legal imperatives of supporting their roles in marketizing the economy and liberalizing the society in one of the worst human rights–violating states. Women are North Korea's most deserving recipients of international assistance and the country's most promising partners to the world.

Keywords

Democratic People's Republic of Korea, DPRKhuman rights lawgender equalitypublic healthcross-border migrationChinamarketizationlabor exploitationinternational organizations
Type
Essays
Information
Ethics & International Affairs , Volume 35 , Issue 1 , Spring 2021 , pp. 19 - 29
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs

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References

NOTES

1 Haggard, Stephan and Noland, Marcus, “Gender in Transition: The Case of North Korea,” World Development 41, no. 52 (January 2013), pp. 51–66CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at p. 52.

2 As quoted in Suzy Kim, “Revolutionary Mothers: Women in the North Korean Revolution, 1945–1950,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 52, no.4 (October 2010), pp. 742–767, at p. 752.

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5 Kyung-Ae Park, “Women and Social Change in South and North Korea: Marxist and Liberal Perspectives,” (working paper no. 231, Women in International Development, Michigan State University, June 1992), p. 10.

6 North Korean men continue to dominate high-paying positions in heavy industries, government, and trade, while women occupy low-paying and arduous jobs in the clerical, health, educational, or agricultural sectors. See Dalton, Bronwen, Jung, Kyungja, and Willis, Jacqueline, “Fashion and the Social Construction of Femininity in North Korea,” in “Culture, Identity and Gender in East Asia,” special issue, Asian Studies Review 41, no. 4 (2017), pp. 507–25CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at p. 511.

7 Sookyung Kim, Kyu-chang Lee, Kyung-ok Do, and Jea-hwan Hong, “White Paper on Human Rights in North Korea 2019” (Korea Institute for National Unification, September 2019), p. 25.

8 U.S. Department of State, 2019 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices: Democratic People's Republic of Korea (Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor, U.S. Department of State, 2020), pp. 1–28, at p. 20.

9 Lee Mi-kyung, “The Issue of North Korean Women by Examining Gender Awareness of Female Defectors,” Korean Journal of International Relations 45, no. 5 (December 2005), pp. 155–78, at p. 161.

10 The treaties include the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (1966); the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (1979); the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (1966); the Convention on the Rights of the Child (1989); the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (2006); and the Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child (2000).

11 UN Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women, “Consideration of Reports Submitted by States Parties under Article 18 of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women,” CEDAW/C/PRK/2-4, April 15, 2016, pp. 1-34, at p. 3, /tbinternet.ohchr.org/Treaties/CEDAW/Shared%20Documents/PRK/CEDAW_C_PRK_2-4_5933_E.pdf.

12 Human Rights Council, United Nations General Assembly, Report of the Commission of Inquiry on Human Rights in the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (Geneva: HRC, 2014).

13 Jonathan T. Chow, “North Korea's Participation in the Universal Periodic Review of Human Rights,” Australian Journal of International Affairs 71, no. 2 (2017), pp. 146–63.

14 Human Rights Watch, “You Cry at Night but Don't Know Why”: Sexual Violence against Women in North Korea (New York Human Rights Watch, November 2018).

15 Ibid., p. 6.

16 James Burt, Us Too: Sexual Violence against North Korean Women & Girls (London: Korea Future Initiative, 2018), pp. 1–82, at p. 8.

17 Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, “I Still Feel the Pain . . . ”: Human Rights Violations against Women Detained in the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (Seoul: Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, 2020), p. 20.

18 Ibid., pp. 19, 24, 40.

19 Hyunmin An and Jina Sim, Periods Are a Shameful Thing in North Korea: The State of Menstrual Health of North Korean Women (Seoul: Database Center for North Korean Human Rights, 2018), p. 101.

20 UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, DPR Korea Needs and Priorities 2020 (April 2020), dprkorea.un.org/sites/default/files/2020-04/2020_DPRK_Needs_and-Priorities_Plan.pdf.

21 Human Rights Council, “Human Rights Council Discusses the Situation of Human Rights in the Democratic People's Republic of Korea and South Sudan, and the United Nations’ Involvement in Myanmar,” United Nations Human Rights Office of the High Commissioner, March 9, 2020, www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=25690&LangID=E.

22 Moon Ga-Eul, Park Bora, Lee Eun Sil, Choi Gyu-Yeon, Lee Jeong-Jae, Lee ImSoon, and Lee Joonwhoan, “The Health Conditions of the North Korean Women Defectors and the Marriage Immigrant Women,” Journal of the Korean Society of Maternal and Child Health 19, no. 1 (2015), pp. 103–9.

23 Su-Min Hwang, “The North Korean Women Who Had to Escape Twice,” BBC News, January 18, 2019, www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-46610882.

24 U.S. Mission Korea, “North Korea's Trafficking in Persons Report (2009),” U.S. Embassy & Consulate in the Republic of Korea, June 14, 2010, kr.usembassy.gov/061410-north-koreas-trafficking-persons-report-2010/.

25 Committee for Human Rights in North Korea, Lives for Sale: Personal Accounts of Women Fleeing North Korea to China (Washington, D.C.: Committee for Human Rights in North Korea, 2009), p. 24.

26 Dalton et al., “Fashion and the Social Construction of Femininity in North Korea,” p. 517.

27 Demick, Barbara, Nothing to Envy: Real Lives in North Korea (New York: Spiegel & Grau, 2010), pp. 147–59Google Scholar.

28 Hastings, Justin V., A Most Enterprising Country: North Korea in the Global Economy (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2016), p. 6CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

29 As of 2016, it is believed that around four hundred jangmadang existed across the nation and 1.8 million people visited them each day. Kim Myung-sung, “North Korea's Jangmadang Doubles in the Past Five Years,” The Chosun Ilbo, September 21, 2016, news.chosun.com/site/data/html_dir/2016/09/21/2016092100179.html.

30 Haggard and Noland, “Gender in Transition: The Case of North Korea,” p. 54.

31 Kim, Byung-Yeon, Unveiling the North Korean Economy: Collapse and Transition (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 2017), p. 92CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

32 Mobile North Korean women move around inside the country and across borders for economic activities; see Ernst, Maximillian and Jurowetzki, Roman, “Satellite Data, Women Defectors and Black Markets in North Korea: A Quantitative Study of the North Korean Informal Sector Using Night-Time Lights Satellite Imagery,” North Korean Review 12, no. 2 (October 2016), pp. 64–83Google Scholar.

33 The data on North Korean women in China is often inaccessible or incomplete. As many female defectors resettle in South Korea after transiting through China, South Korean statistics indicate the increased mobility and economic activity of North Korean women. See Ernst and Jurowetzki, “Satellite Data, Women Defectors and Black Markets in North Korea.”

34 Jiyoung Song, “Twenty Years' Evolution of North Korean Migration, 1994-2014: A Human Security Perspective,” in “Health Policy Challenges in Asia and the Pacific,” special issue, Asia and the Pacific Policy Studies 2, no. 2 (May 2015), pp. 399–415, at p. 402.

35 “Annual Number of North Korean Refugees Entering South Korea,” Ministry of Unification, n.d., www.unikorea.go.kr/unikorea/business/NKDefectorsPolicy/status/lately/.

36 Chico Harlan, “North Korean Defectors Learn Quickly How to Send Money Back Home,” Washington Post, February 15, 2012, www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/blogpost/post/north-korean-defectors-learn-how-to-send-money-back-home/2012/02/06/gIQAegsEeFR_blog.html.

37 Sung Kyung Kim, “Mobile North Korean Women and Their Places in the Sino-North Korea Borderland,” in “Borderlands in Asia: Emergent Conditions and Relations,” ed. Yuk Wah Chan and Brantly Womack, special issue, Asian Anthropology 15, no. 2 (2016), pp. 116–31, at p. 121.

38 Esther Pan, “North Korea's Capitalist Experiment,” Council on Foreign Relations, June 8, 2006, www.cfr.org/backgrounder/north-koreas-capitalist-experiment.

39 Kim, “Mobile North Korean Women and Their Places in the Sino-North Korea Borderland,” p. 123

40 Before the UN sanctions of 2017 and the pandemic in 2020, perhaps thirty thousand legal North Korean workers resided in Dandong and around fifteen hundred to three thousand in Yanji. See Kim, “Mobile North Korean Women and Their Places in the Sino-North Korea Borderland,” p. 121.

41 “2019 Trafficking in Persons Report: Democratic People's Republic of Korea,” U.S. Department of State, n.d., www.state.gov/reports/2019-trafficking-in-persons-report-2/democratic-peoples-republic-of-korea/.

42 Congressional-Executive Commission on China, Annual Report of the One Hundred Ninth Congress, First Session (Washington, D.C.: US Government Printing Office, 2005), p. 113Google Scholar.

43 Kim et al., “White Paper on Human Rights in North Korea 2019,” p. 376.