Korea, North

Women's and Mothers' Roles

Historically, the role of women in Korean society was being a homemaker and helping run the family farms. During the Japanese Occupation (1910–45), the Japanese disrupted Korean society and forced many Korean men and women to work for the Japanese. Tens of thousands of Korean women and girls to become “comfort women” in military-run brothels for the Japanese soldiers. After the end of the Japanese Occupation, the Korean War (1950–53) saw the destruction of most of the cities in North Korea, again creating major societal problems.

The former leader of North Korea, Kim Il Sung, always paid great respect to the role of women in his speeches and public engagements. His wife, Kim Jongsuk, who died in 1949, was held up as the great motherly figure of the country—and is the mother of the country's current leader, Kim Jong Il. There are details in government publications on the work of many other women, and according to the official literature on the country, women's health care claims to be high on the list of government achievements.

The level of maternity care has improved since the 1940s and 1950s, and the Pyongyang Maternity Hospital was praised as one of the best in mainland northeast Asia when it was constructed. North Korean publications show heavy use of closed-circuit television to allow families to talk to mothers after birth without risk of passing on infections. Great emphasis is placed on infant care, and large kindergartens exist in cities and towns. Although there are general kindergartens, it appears that much of the care of small children is undertaken at the workplace in factory and office daycare centers. There is clear evidence that most women work as well as raise their families, and women feature heavily in North Korean government magazines.

Although the rare foreign visitor to the country has been able to visit health care facilities in Pyongyang, the countryside is believed to be far less well equipped. During the famine in 1999, food shortages caused problems for many expectant mothers, and many tens of thousands of people (some estimates run in the hundreds of thousands) died from starvation and disease exacerbated from malnutrition. Due to lack of information on this isolated country, Save the Children has not assigned a North Korean rank on the Mothers', Women's or Children's Index.

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