How Women Saved Their Families in North Korea

In the past, North Koreans relied on a national rationing system which guaranteed their food and daily necessities. By the early 1990s, this system collapsed and people who once depended on it or who worked in small enterprises and on farm were helpless and eventually died. As the battle with hunger started, women began to run small business were considered a means to stay alive but today trade has become vital to North Korea’s economy.

At first, children and parents died of hunger together. Then, women started to take their place in the markets and some woman began carrying fish on her back to the villages and exchanged it for corn. Then in 1998, the home phone was used to take orders. Now, no one trusts the nation. People have come to accept their own way of living.

Before the big famine, men were responsible for the well being of their families. The leader of North Korea once made an order to elevate female elites; the head of the family was always male figure. However, after the march of suffering, more than 90 percent of women on the responsibility of family head. Men were considered insignificant and dismissed as unless as a standing lamp.

At first, the only work available for women was to sell food at the markets. However, as money was accumulated and market strategies developed, women began to trade with other districts, expanding their businesses. Eventually, all women were trading some sort of goods. Women would travel on cargo trucks or trains travelling to and from different villages, carrying two or three packs that weighed 50 kg. Many people boarded these vehicles and as a result, some fell off and even died. But women still continued to trade.

By 2005, the number of families living off corn decreased significantly. Now, 40 to 50 percent of households eat rice. This is all due to the perseverance of women who went about selling goods. As people began accumulate money through bartering and the market scales increased, men began to leave their jobs to try their luck in business. But recently these small-scale businesses have been restricted by tough new government controls.