North Korea’s unfinished women’s liberation | NK News
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September 27, 2026Sep 27, 2026

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North Korea’s unfinished women’s liberation

Pro-emancipation rhetoric, need for female labor, clashes with engrained patriarchal ideas

March is the month when there is a lot of talk about women in the North Korean press. Indeed, on the 8th of March, North Korea celebrates a holiday once widely known throughout the Communist Bloc: the Day of International Women’s Solidarity.

Initially, the March 8 holiday was conceived as a celebration of radical feminism. It is almost forgotten by now, but in its early romantic days, the communist movement was decisively feminist. Supporters of the early revolutionary Marxism not merely believed in the political and legal equality of women, but also demanded the economic gender equality, and emphasized that