May 31, 2023
Columns

The extraordinarily normal life of a North Korean woman from a rural town

Move from countryside to career to housewife typifies apolitical path of majority that rarely questions DPRK society

It’s easy to overestimate the importance of politics in North Korean society and forget that for the majority that lives in the country, the Kim state is a marginal concern. Most North Korean people go to work or school, date, enjoy leisure time (usually with a few beers) and live their lives seldom questioning the society they were born in. 

Kim Young-sook (a pseudonym) was one such person, a daughter of a well-to-do family, reasonably successful in all her undertakings and, I would say, pretty typical.