What’s behind mandatory military service for women?
(Image: iStock/Omer Serkan Bakir)
Growing up, my mother always said, “Don’t wait for a man who went to the army.”
She was patient for ten years before my father was discharged from military service and they could marry. She often lamented how she had never had a chance to date in college.
Forcing young men to spend the best years of their youth – ten long years – in compulsory military service is nothing short of brutal.
Conscription isn’t unique to North Korea. Around 70 countries have some form of mandatory military service. However, most of them limit it to between one and three years. In Egypt, for example, which has the next longest period after North Korea, service lasts up to 36 months.
South Korea has also shortened its term to 18 months. But in the North, men serve up to 13 years, and women up to eight years. This system functions not just as a national defense strategy, but as a mechanism of regime control.
North Korea’s military service began after the announcement of the “People’s Army Service Ordinance” in 1956. Service was presented as voluntary, but was effectively compulsory. Initially, service periods were set at 40 months for the army, and 48 months for the navy and air force, though in practice, they lasted much longer.
In 1993, a new system was introduced with men serving 10 years and women seven, regardless of their age at the start. This policy was enforced broadly following North Korea’s withdrawal from the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons and its subsequent declaration of a quasi-wartime status. Except for a few university-recommended individuals, most were conscripted.
In 1996, the policy shifted again, this time to a “service age limit system,” where men had to serve until they were 30 and women until 26. In 2003, the regime codified conscription into law as a nationwide obligation, relaxing physical standards to account for teenage undernourishment.
Until recently, women were conscripted on a voluntary basis. But in June 2014, this was changed to a mandatory system. Most women now enlist after high school and serve for seven to eight years. Some North Korea experts interpret the shift as a strategic move by the regime to address troop shortages and labor issues within the country.
“I was deployed as a midwife to a hospital and ended up conducting physical screening of new recruits,” said Kim Sara (alias), a 30-year-old who once studied medicine in North Korea and recently resettled in South Korea.
“When it began, we received orders from above to record women’s height two centimeters taller than it actually was,” she said. “Male students, even if shorter than females, could pass if they were 147 cm because they were expected to grow taller. But since female students are considered to stop growing after they are 17 due to estrogen accelerating bone maturation, the minimum requirement was set at 153 cm.”
“Under Kim Jong-il, the minimum height was 156 cm, but under Kim Jong-un, it was lowered. If a girl measured 151 cm, we wrote down 153. After the mandatory system was introduced, even the officials were reportedly troubled by the change.”
“I heard from hospital officials that Kim Il-sung had once visited a male-only military unit and found it pitiful,” she said. “He ordered the creation of an adjacent women’s unit and specified the gender ratio should be about 8:2. That’s when I understood why male and female units were stationed together.”
“During Kim Jong-il’s time, if a girl was tall enough, parents could bribe officials to keep her out of the military,” she said. “As such bribery became more common, fewer women volunteered. At least in Jagang Province where I lived, sending a daughter to the army was seen as abandoning her. People saw it as a choice, one they would not make. As support rates fell, the regime made military service compulsory for women.”
Choi Ji-hyang, who once lived in Chongjin, North Hamgyong Province, and has since resettled in South Korea, said, “In North Korea, women who’ve been in the military are called ‘Stone Age.’ Men avoid them, saying they’re brainwashed and out of touch with reality. Families will do whatever it takes to keep daughters out of the army, faking medical conditions if necessary. So for North Korea, the only solution was to make enlistment compulsory.”
“In December 2011, after Kim Jong-il died, an emergency collective enlistment order was issued at high schools,” she said. “They said we were entering wartime readiness and all girls had to serve. Parents sent daughters to relatives in other provinces to hide them. I hid at my grandmother’s house. But that couldn’t last. My mother bribed a doctor to issue a fake tuberculosis certificate, which we submitted to school. The school didn’t believe it the first time, so we kept getting new diagnoses every month from different doctors. Officials and doctors reportedly made a lot of money off families with daughters. That was when I started thinking about defecting.”
“Even after reaching the initial draft age of 14, girls who got into special fields or universities were previously exempt,” she said. “But in 2012, universities barely had any freshmen because they were all conscripted. One of my friends was taken during that time and sent to an artillery unit near Pyongyang. Some thought she was lucky, but others whispered she was there because her family had no money.”
Kim 0-chan, a male now living in South Korea, said, “Girls can dodge service during high school by submitting fake medical reports like tuberculosis diagnoses. But every April and August, there’s a mandatory physical examination known as ‘social draft.’ If no disease is found, they have to enlist. The real reason for mandatory service for women is a shortage of troops and the regime’s desire to control women who cause trouble by trading in the markets. They want to bind them within the military system to prevent that. But more than anything, it’s about ideologically tying youth to the regime.”
“Personally, what angers me most is that I couldn’t even join the Party after serving,” Kim said. “Under Kim Jong-il, over nine out of 10 soldiers were allowed to join. Under Kim Jong-un, Party admission became competitive. Even superiors failed to get in. That’s when I decided to defect. For women, it’s the same. They suffer through service, don’t get into the Party, and are treated as je-ssem (the worst bride candidates) in society. This system is especially cruel to women.”
The background behind the mandatory conscription of women includes troop shortages, youth control, suppression of market activity, and the long-standing 8:2 gender ratio policy in military units dating back to the Kim Il-sung era.
The real reason may not even matter. What’s clear is that women have once again been sacrificed for the sake of regime maintenance.
Whatever the truth may be, the principle that “the state should exist for its people” has collapsed in the face of North Korean women’s reality. Under the name of “mandatory military service,” the rights and freedoms of North Korean women have once again silently receded.
Jia defected from North Korea in search of basic freedoms, including the right to travel and freely express herself. Her identity as a North Korean has given her a sense of responsibility to represent the voices of her family and hometown friends and is also the reason she has chosen to work as a journalist.
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