Sex in North Korea

Prostitution has become widespread in North Korea. The sex trade is prohibited in principle, but after the severe food shortage in the mid 1990s it became common and centers on stations in big cities. If you go to the Pyongyang station, old women will approach men and ask if they will not take up standby lodging. Standby lodging, in one word, means home stay. Men if they are interested, will point to a woman standing on the platform and say, ’this one for 10000 won and that one for 25000 won’. Women are not gathered in one place, but stand scattered between people.

The price is based on appearance and age, in that order. If the man selects a woman, they go together. In the starvation period, it was said the female college students went out onto the streets to sell themselves. Women applying to join Labour Party often had to sleep with their leader. If women become admitted, they can become big leaders, so there are lots of women who want to enter. But women applicants have to summit their bodies to the leaders. If women are admitted, it automatically means these women have undergone such incidences. This is standard. It has become so prevalent that anybody will acknowledge this. But no one will touch women after they are admitted to the party.

Additionally, many women grow up ignorant of sex. North Korean teenagers rarely receive any sex education. Female students are taught in applied subjects about women’s hygiene, health and raising baby, but male-female relationships are not taught. There are no contraceptives and they have not even heard of a condom. One day a college friend needed an abortion. In a North Korean college, if the pregnancy is revealed, the student is kicked out of school. But she did not know what to do because she had never received any information about sex. She went to the neighborhood clinic and gave the doctor some cigarettes and pleaded. Finally, she was referred to an obstetrician at the district’s hospital. But even there, you have to give money under the table to the doctor. Hospitals do not even give food, so they had to bring rice themselves. After paying 30000 won, she was able to safely undergo the surgery.