The purpose of this study is to show how North Korean women's motherhood which had been constructed by the state ideology concerned, changed at a practical level in the face of the so-called March of Hardship, marketization and the immigration.
For t...
The purpose of this study is to show how North Korean women's motherhood which had been constructed by the state ideology concerned, changed at a practical level in the face of the so-called March of Hardship, marketization and the immigration.
For this purpose, it needs to be empirically analyzed which course of actions the north korean women have strategically taken in the sense of alternatives of the patriarchal, the state ideology-led motherhood, and the individualized one which is adopted as a survival strategy.
Since its foundation North Korea has approached the issue with the aim of the eradication of the patriarchy. Although the gender equality has been guaranteed by the statutory laws including the DPRK constitutions and the Law on Gender Equality, the women took in their real life the double burden in that they were required to contribute to the nation-building as well as to revolutionize the family (or household), as the regime forced them to remain mothers who accept the patriarchal order as given, not their own selves in the gender perspective.
The motherhood in North Korea went through a few changes, as the socio-economic environments in the country changed. The March of Hardship changed the role of a woman within the family, and reorganized its structure so that it can be fit for economic situations, and it also significantly helped bring on a change in women's own image of mother. In the 2000s, the state-led ?7·1 Economic Management Improvement Measures? and marketization failed to live up to the expectations of women, where they hoped for the state to return to the pre-economic-crisis, thus the measures created a gap between North Korean women's motherhood and its reality in the state-engineered patriarchal ideology.
Women's economic activities, driven by the marketization, and their frequent travels created their absence within the family, rendering it impossible to implement the mother's conventional family support method. Nonetheless, the diverse ideas which mothers came up with and their dynamic practice thereof led North Korean families to face a new turnaround in supporting their families. As women's travel distance gradually expanded, they crossed the borderline and some resulted in settling in South Korea, creating super-national families. The North Korean woman defectors' practice of motherhood in South Korea required new-level strategies different from surrogate care and surrogate fostering conducted in North Korea. This challenged them to practice yet another type of motherhood. They were physically far away from their families, but they used communication devices in maintaining the family coherence and sent money so as to play the role of financially supporting the family, so they had some empowerment as mothers. In addition, mothers' long-distance travel caused their children to suffer the absence of their mother.
North Korean women have travelled (fled) to South Korea, where they now live but continue to get involved in their households left in North Korea through their sacrifices and efforts so that they can support their families while improving their own economic powers.
In particular, in their efforts to practice their long-distance motherhood, it is the most noticeable for North Korean women in South Korea to provide economic support for and raise their children so that they as the next generation can help build North Korea's new economy in the future. The economic support is the driving force behind their children’s becoming a new generation in the North Korean society.
As such, North Korean women's practice of motherhood continues despite social, physical and spatial limitations, and the strategies and actions created by such motherhoods will bring about a great change in North Korean society.