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https://theconversation.com/from-sexual-liberation-to-fashionable-heels-new-research-shows-how-women-are-changing-north-korea-218711>
"Kang* was 20 years old when she left her official job as a potato researcher
in North Korea. She wanted to join the women who had taken up illicit market
activities, first to survive the “Arduous March” (as the famine years of the
mid-1990s were known), then to build better lives for themselves and their
families outside the tight controls of the government.
Kang began trading goods like rice, metals and petroleum to generate an income
well beyond what she could have expected from state-sanctioned employment.
Eventually, before reaching South Korea in 2013, her most lucrative business
was a brokerage service for young women who wished to work in factories in
China.
Kang was one of the women who took part in the research for our new book,
North Korea’s Women-led Grassroots Capitalism. As she told us,
What was most rewarding about the work was the money. I could pay for my
younger sister’s university tuition, as well as my stepchildren’s. I could
even buy [Workers’] Party membership for my husband, eventually making him a
party secretary. I felt myself maturing through businesses.
It was as if we were like party officials providing for their children. I
could make all that possible with the money I earned.
The emergence of grassroots capitalism in North Korea, through women like Kang,
provides a cautionary tale for patriarchal societies everywhere: underestimate
women at your peril.
Ironically, we found in our research that by seeking to exclude women from the
public sphere and formal economy, North Korea’s government has actually spurred
them to become entrepreneurs, with cascading effects on society."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
