A Capitalist in North Korea: My Seven Years in the Hermit Kingdom

by Felix Abt

  From visiting universities, I also got the impression that the share of female students at universities is rather high, and certainly not lower than at universities of Western countries. Official figures aren’t available to my knowledge. At some schools I’ve met female headmasters, and at hospitals I’ve chatted with female department heads and hospital directors.

  They often do, by the way, a better job than their male colleagues. For example, I was once revisiting a garment factory where I met the new director, Ms. Kim. I knew her predecessor Mr. Ri and asked my translator what happened to him. After inquiring with some of the factory staff, he told me that Ms. Kim is much more competent and more hardworking than her male predecessor.

  The saying that old habits die hard is particularly true in Korea (both North and South), which from my experiences are much more Confucian than the less principled and more pragmatic Chinese and other East Asians. Even though the state has promoted gender equality since it was founded more than sixty years ago, most men still behave like bosses towards their families and in society, following ancient Confucian traditions.

  This patriarchic system manifested itself in my workplace. One time, I was in a meeting with the CEO, the sales manager and staff of a company in Pyongyang. The CEO’s secretary was not in the company that day and could therefore not serve us coffee or tea. All present were male except the sales manager. Although the sales manager on the other side of the table was second-highest in ranking, it was striking that none of her male subordinates would serve drinks. Rather, the task was delegated to the female sales manager herself, a move that is increasingly rare in urban China or Vietnam.

  For instance, young couples still prefer to have boys instead of girls, because preserving the male line of the family is considered more meritous. Other countries like China and Vietnam still prefer boys, but North Korea has been remarkably swift at working against gender discrimination. After World War II, for one, the Party enacted its Gender Equality Law. And in its constitution it expressly stressed that “women hold equal social status and rights with men.”

  Yet women who work mostly in the light industry or in office jobs are paid less than the men working in heavy and engineering industries. I might add that wage gaps also exist in many “developed” countries, like the USA, which are not necessarily related to Confucianism. Women usually have a full plate of office work like their husbands, but also take on the burden of housework, looking after children, and preparing meals. Thanks to the Confucian hierarchy, though, grandparents sometimes live with the couple, lending a hand to the young mother where they can.

  I was impressed by the many women that go to work, representing clearly a higher percentage than that of my native country Switzerland. Tara Walters writes in her book North Korea, published in 2008, that women make up an astounding 49 percent of the work force. She also mentioned that in the 1990s more North Korean women held government positions than there were American women holding comparable positions in the U.S.—a feat considering the different sizes of their populations.

  Will relationships between men and women be different when these girls are grown up?

  Mrs. Han is unlucky. She will have to cope with her frustrations throughout her life, and it’s unlikely the gender imbalance will subside. But her children’s generation, which many parents are bringing up differently, might not face the same frustrations as they look for jobs and meet their spouses. Another mother and employee of mine obviously agreed with that statement. She told me that she encouraged her daughter to become a master at Taekwondo, the Korean martial arts, as “it is good for a girl to know how to defend herself against abusive boys and men with little respect for women.”

  Although the state encourages couples to have several children, most choose to have only one. That’s pretty much the opposite situation in China, where the government requires families to have only one child to be able to feed its huge population. North Korea has half the population of its southern neighbor, and thus needs more people to get a sustainable economy going. The main burden of raising children lies with the mothers, who juggle full-time employment as well.

  My North Korean colleagues often gave insight into the situation of women, although it didn’t sound much different from other developing countries (and even some so-called “developed” ones too). Washing machines were an unaffordable item for most families in Pyongyang and an absolute luxury in the countryside. Clothing is usually washed by hand with a cheap soap instead of washing powder, though you would not realize it from the appearance of the clean and smartly dressed women which is quite amazing. In the countryside, I watched women crouch at rivers washing clothes.

  For three days in a row, to name another example, I noticed that Mrs. Kang, my employee, stumbled into the office disheveled and with sleepy raccoon eyes. She was frequently yawning at her desk. I asked her into my office and offered her a coffee to perk her awake.

  “Mrs. Kang, you look so tired,” I said, hoping to console her. “I suggest you go home early, have a good rest and then you will be fresh and fit when you are back tomorrow.”

  She quickly denied that she was tired and insisted on finishing her work normally. Koreans do not like to admit to something that does not look good, because it makes them even feel ashamed, and, to use the old cliché, they “lose face.”

  “Look, anybody can get tired for some reason,” I told her. “I also get tired at times, and when I do, I try to get a good rest to be fit again thereafter.”

  She opened up a little, explaining that she was having sleepless nights because she heard noisy neighbors yelling and crying loudly every night.

  “Why can’t you and others ask them to stop making noise during the night?” I asked.

  “The husband beats his wife,” she responded. “The neighbors don’t care, and even if they complain, the man would not change.”

  I gave her my ear plugs for sleeping and said, “I know that, unfortunately, many men all over the world beat their wives. Tell me, does it often happen here that men beat their wives?”

  “Well, you know, it’s not so seldom,” she hesitatingly answered.

  Over the next few days, Mrs. Kang didn’t seem tired any longer. I am not sure if the ear plugs blurted out the terror next door, or if she told her husband that I, her boss, became aware of her tiredness and that he did something about it.

  My way or your way? A couple has a playful disagreement on whom they should follow for their stroll in the park.

  After a business meeting, I had lunch with members of an academic society. After a good meal, a lot of beer and soju, we all became a bit more cheerful and talkative. Professor Rim, a witty, gregarious scholar who entertained us with funny jokes sat to my left.

  “Professor,” I inquired. “I was told wife beating is one of the favorite sports of Korean husbands, of course after soccer.”

  He chuckled and answered, “That is true until they get old. Then things change drastically for the husbands, and the then stronger wives in turn will adopt this sport as their favorite one. And as you can imagine they take revenge by beating their husbands from thereon without the risk of husbands hitting back.”

  I was intrigued by his story, even if he was joking. When I brought the topic up with other men, I got the impression that older women received more respect than younger ones. The deference isn’t only because old age is more respected in this Confucian society, but also because a measure of justice comes back at a later stage.

  Our male and female staff enjoyed well-deserved merry evenings together in karaoke rooms. The attitude between men and women was certainly not uptight, but normal and relaxed, as seen from this photo of this non-couple dancing together.

  Sometimes big open air balls, which are formal social gatherings for dancing, take place on large squares and I have seen this, by chance, a couple of times. There must have been hundreds of young people dancing to North Korean music. I found it strange that many men were dancing together while numer
ous women were free and talking to and dancing with other women.

  I talked about what I have seen to some of my staff and asked why so many free men and women were apparently not interested in dancing with one another. “Well, they surely are interested in dancing with one another but they must have been quite young and were therefore a little shy,” one woman told me. “When they go to their second bal, most of them will dance.”

  There were many other opportunities for young people to meet. I saw young men and women flirt at bowling alleys and other places. A Korean mother told me that her daughter fell in love with her future husband during the many rehearsals for a mass spectacle, where they had enough time to observe each other.

  Although numerous things are controlled in this country, the Korean Workers’ Party does not legally regulate relationships between men and women. It does discourage a liberal culture of sex, but men and women make the ultimate decisions about their marital and extra-marital love lives, even if they risk their reputation in the process.

  When senior party members commit adultery—particularly if it’s sex in exchange for favors and privileges, they’re often expelled from Pyongyang to live a harsh life in the countryside. Wives are expected to make sure their powerful husbands don’t stray from the “correct” path, protecting their jobs and family’s higher living standards. This doesn’t mean that wives are blamed when husbands commit adultery. Rather, it emphasizes the importance to contribute to maintain the integrity of the family, which is the basic unit that North Korea’s society is built on.

  Still, everyday relations between the sexes have been relaxed in recent years, a development that owes to the loosened grip of the state after the economic downturn in the 1990s crippled the old ways. Chinese and Vietnamese students studying at North Korean universities told me that they observed more North Korean boys and girls walking together and holding hands over the years, something unheard of in the past.

  Mrs. Pak had to bring an important letter to a customer in Pyongyang, and I expected her to be back within an hour. When she returned after two hours, I was rather upset given our big workload that day. Before I could scold her, she quickly apologized. “I am sorry for the delay,” she said. “On my way back I bumped into a school friend with whom I attended the same class at the university, and whom I have not seen since then.

  She went on. “She has just gone through a divorce and was sad and told me the whole story. I did not mean to be rude with her, particularly given her personal circumstances, and did therefore not run away, but stayed and listened!”

  I decided that this was not some petty excuse. If she wanted to get out of trouble, she could have found 20 other excuses that were less spectacular than this one. “I am sorry for your friend,” I responded. “What was the reason for the divorce? Did the husband want to leave his wife for another woman? Was he unfaithful?” I asked with a grin.

  She answered evasively: “I don’t know exactly. It must have been something like that.”

  “C’mon, after talking so long with her, you must know everything by now,” I replied.

  She smiled and answered: “I believe in Europe they say men are no angels.”

  “Now that we agree that both Korean and European men do not wear wings, let’s get back to work!” I answered. I knew from other Koreans that divorces were getting more frequent, as women became more financially independent.

  North Korean women, both charming and clever, undoubtedly know how to handle opinionated men

  Despite the persistence of gender roles, North Korean women can take on sophisticated and self-confident demeanors not far off from their counterparts in Seoul—a trend I began noticing in 2003. As long as the skirt covers the knees and the blouse covers the breasts, there is no limit to colors and styles a woman can wear. More women started wearing their hairstyles as perms, around 2005, they began wearing wellies with trendy, colorful patterns or high-heels, and platform shoes and attractive business suits.

  On the streets of Pyongyang, I’ve seen many elegant ladies that resembled those in Shanghai or Singapore—the only difference that they wore a pin marking their patriotism. In another sign of pragmatic realism, the laws over the last 10 years that prohibited women from wearing high heels, trousers and earrings - considered un-socialist and Western - were abolished on July 4, 2012 (although they were never truly enforced anyway). Until then, women were supposed to wear skirts in public. They were hitherto allowed to wear trousers only during their factory and farming work, but not skin-tight ones or jeans. Mini skirts are still not allowed, but I saw women performing in mini skirts during artistic and musical shows.

  Smart, self-confident and elegant North Korean women, who were part of my staff, travel on a bus in China, while a Chinese lady on the right leaves the bus.

  One of my intelligent young North Korean staff members poses in a Chinese shopping mall.

  In the countryside outside Pyongyang, though, pragmatism prevails over the principles so dear to Pyongyangites. Most women in the countryside support their families by earning money through trade, buying and selling all kinds of goods and transporting it with their bicycles (a mode of transportation that, in the capital, women don’t ride).

  Social and political control of both men and women used to be strong, as in all socialist countries. In North Korea however, the political power was stronger over men, because they were assumed to be politically less loyal and reliable than women. Men were supposed to work in factories and farms and to report to their work unit every day—even when the factory was idle—to make sure they got their regular political training.

  Married women, however, were allowed to stay at home and be housewives. With the downturn of the state economy in the 1990s their lower social status allowed them to engage in all sorts of trading and other business activities. In East Asia, there’s a common historical thread, in this sense, that men hold political power and women hold economic power through trading—the latter being considered the low rank of a merchant.

  Indeed, thanks to both the low cost and number of goods that can be carried on bicycles, and the mobile phones that came up in recent years, these women (that as the families’ new breadwinners acquired a higher social position than their husbands) can multiply their earnings which is a blessing for their hitherto poor families.

  Mr. Pak, a senior official of a provincial government told me jealously that when women get too much money, they also accumulate too much power within the family. Another Korean man, who had difficulty accepting women who earn more money than men, told me that this has caused family tensions and divorces. The “problem” of women bringing home an income, of course, isn’t serious, and the conflict probably comes from men anxious about losing their perceived power and self-confidence.

  At least once per month I took care of financial matters at the Foreign Trade Bank, the largest bank in Pyongyang. While I was standing in line, I observed that most Korean customers were women between 25 and 50 years old. They were all neatly dressed and carried sharp attaché cases. These ladies, most likely, were Bu Gi, or the financial managers of companies and other entities. Since women were assumed to be more loyal, the state thought they could be a pure force to get rid of financial waste and corruption.

  Even my pharmaceutical company hired a young woman who was chief financial officer. She was very competent, hardworking and trustworthy. Another software company I co-founded employed a young woman as Bu Gi for the same reason. At a cocktail party I had some small talk with a vice minister. I told him that I realized that it is the women who are the masters of the money within companies and organizations.

  “You know our country well,” he answered. “Women are serious, good at numbers and are trusted. That’s why we like them to be in charge of finance.”

  But women were not good only at finance. I came to realize that, in North Korea, women were generally competent and hardworking, and generally more disciplined and honest than men. Therefore, it was a small won
der that I started the sales department at the pharmaceutical company with one man—and ended up with a sales team that was one hundred percent female.

  At one point, I began hiring only female staff for our pharmacies. They took on a good taste for service and friendliness to customers. When hiring technical staffers to maintain a high safety standard in a new microbiological laboratory, I chose women because they were very thorough. Additionally, the quality assurance manager also had to be a trustworthy woman, because this was a key post that involved enforcing internationally highest quality standards. That was a complicated task, involving the purchase of raw materials to processing them to the delivery of the finished products.

  This company became the country’s model pharmaceutical enterprise, a recognition from the government that owed, in large part, to its great female employees. I do owe a lot to them. Without them, I, the managing director, would have failed miserably and the company would have died a swift death. I didn’t mean to pursue a sort of “reverse discrimination” against men, but hiring women simply made more sense because they tended to be better qualified and better at this sort of work.

  Every year on International Women’s Day, held on March 8, my male colleagues and I paid respect to our hard-working female staff, giving them a karaoke evening in recognition for all they did for the company and their country.

  In the Kaesong Industrial Park, a collaborative industrial zone run by both countries on the North Korean side of the DMZ, more than hundred South Korean factories produce textiles, electronics and machinery using cheap North Korean labor. Out of the 50,000 or more North Korean workers, almost three quarters were women at the beginning of 2012, according to the South Korean government. Women were believed to be more productive when using their hands at work - a requirement of many of the factories in Kaesong.