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Role reversal: why most criminals in North Korea are now women

Era Seo
As pressure on North Korean women intensifies, some are turning to any lucrative opportunity—despite authorities deeming it a crime (Image: iStock.com/Tinnakorn Jorruang)

A recent video used in public lectures and compulsory study sessions provides a glimpse into the types of crimes prevalent these days in North Korea.

Until now, the regime has educated and verbally warned citizens about illegal activities in compulsory lectures arranged by local party authorities. 

However, recently, they have started to produce videos that present criminal incidents and even feature criminals giving warnings to others as a way of driving the message home.

One such video, obtained by NK Insider, concerns crimes committed by women. 

In it, the narrator, Kang Geum-joo, a senior judge at the Pyongyang City Court, starts by blaming lax work unit supervision and education.

“Until these crimes were detected, we (in each factory, enterprise, and unit) were unaware of them,” she says. “How ineffective and blind were the officials who should have structured ideological education and control based on the characteristics of their organization and unit, ensuring that even minor abnormal elements did not appear?” 

She then goes on to list up the types of crime in question. Crimes “related to the desire for personal property” are the most common, she says, followed by drug offenses and production and distribution of foreign cultural content.

Most notably, the narrator observes that women account for more crimes. 

“Women have even participated in actions that violate the dignity of others. When we look at the criminal activities of female offenders, they have reached levels that men can’t even imagine,” he says.

The video goes on to detail some cases. Some people charged with distributing drugs appear on camera and warn viewers that the punishment for drug offenses is severe. Given that even minor drug offenses are punishable by life imprisonment, sources tell us that those involved in the incidents shown in the video would likely have been facing the death penalty.

The same applies to recordings of foreign content, which are euphemistically referred to as “impurities.” North Korea views all films, literature, and music from other countries with hostility. It sees all countries, in other words, as enemies. Anyone possessing such content without approval risks being branded an anti-socialist, non-socialist, or regime-threatening criminal.

North Koreans are as human as anyone else and even with the surveillance network woven around them like a spider’s web, they experience life with others, and enjoy close personal relationships. They yearn for and share news of the outside world. 

The greatest fear of the authorities is that people will awaken to the reality of their dictatorship and become aware of democracy. Kim Jong-il, the late father of Kim Jong-un, is once alleged to have said, “People must be starving to listen well.” In other words, when they are struggling with hunger, they will obey the leader and the party.

This explains why, in 80 years of hereditary rule, they have never once been permitted the freedom to eat, wear, use, watch, speak, or move as they please.

If anything, in the current Kim Jong-un era, control has been tightened. Life in contemporary North Korea is one of extreme hardship. In this context, the fact that female crime rates surpass male crime rates is a stark indicator of how bad things really are.

Typically, men commit more crimes than women. In North Korea, however, we are seeing a role reversal.

North Korea is a highly organized society. After graduating from high school at 17, men go into the military or are assigned to Youth Storm Brigades working at construction sites, in coal mines and on farms. Even after being discharged, their life is strictly managed by the authorities, with relocations and reassignments carried out according to instructions and without time off in between.

Women are similarly assigned in groups to the military, Youth Storm Brigade, coal mines, mines, munitions factories, and farms after high school. But their situation changes once they get married.

They then retire from factory work and, as mothers taking care of children and the home, depend on their husband’s support.

They are nevertheless still affiliated with the Socialist Women’s Union of Korea or party organizations in their residential area and continue to receive directives. 

Men, meanwhile, are sent away from their homes to carry out tasks assigned by the party or are subject to “forced mobilization” which refers to labor that is accompanied by little or no compensation. If they ignore the party’s orders, they risk being sentenced to labor training centers or labor reform.

Praised as one of the “wheels of the revolution,” women are burdened with all kinds of social and agricultural tasks, and other obligations. Dependent housewives, in particular, face even more daily duties of this sort than men who report to work in factories. They are, for example, mobilized to support construction projects for rural homes, ensure supplies of materials, support farms with planting and harvesting, and repair railroads and roads.

As such projects are party assignments, which makes it a crime to openly express dissatisfaction. 

On top of all this, they are required to fully participate in educational events, public lectures, and Life Review Sessions organized by the party.

In recent years, there is a new trend of women running private businesses hiring other people for the cost of lunch or a small payment to do these obligatory tasks for them while they continue to focus on moneymaking. 

Thus, poor women find themselves almost daily engaging in organized tasks without the time to develop more lucrative commercial activities themselves.

To escape this cycle, women are jumping into any money-making opportunity that presents itself, no matter the risk. Whether the regime will ever be able to contain this remains to be seen.

Era Seo
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