Why does North Korea criminalize sex?
The regime claims true love is an emotion based on loyalty to the Party or revolutionary ideals. (Image: iStock/Alina555)
The regime in North Korea makes people consider their natural desires shameful. It makes us feel guilty about the desire for sex or the instinct to beautify ourselves. Why does it do this? How does it benefit from it?
We learn very early in North Korea that sex is a taboo subject. The instincts that arise in the heart are not bad or unpleasant when we follow reason and indulge in them. In fact, they are enjoyable. However, we are taught that our feelings are wrong. As a result, children who engage in innocent interactions with the opposite sex become the target of mockery.
In this way, following our instincts brings shame and guilt. This situation persists into adulthood. At the university I attended, students were forbidden from dating. Of course, some cleverly bypassed the rules. But even then, the very need for secrecy in a romantic relationship made it feel sinful. This was not just a feeling. It was a reality with consequences. One student who had been dating in secret was eventually expelled by the university committee.
We had to learn to suppress our instincts in order to survive.
When I was growing up, a very beautiful girl lived next door. She was of marriageable age. Many men courted her. However, she had someone she loved. The problem was that marriage was not seen as something that could be based solely on love between a man and a woman.
In this context, there is always the involvement of elders and family. Especially in North Korea, which is heavily influenced by Confucianism, one cannot separate these elements.
Eventually, the couple broke up. After this, many of the men who had once pursued her hesitated to marry her because they believed she was no longer pure. What had she done wrong? Is a sad love story something that deserves to be criticized by society? She hadn’t harmed anyone. The only thing that had happened was that a young couple had fallen in love, yet this was perceived like a scarlet letter that followed her, creating an image of impurity.
I truly cannot understand why people criticize sex in such a way. If the Kim family had set an example, perhaps we would understand it better.
So, why are we unable to be more tolerant about sex? It is because society has been gaslighted into viewing sexual acts as inherently wrong. Initially, many men courted her because she was beautiful. This was an expression of instinct. It is natural to be attracted to beautiful people. That is why the effort to try to look beautiful is itself often seen as an act of seduction.
Of course, the regime harshly punishes even this kind of behavior. For example, plastic surgery was popular for a period in North Korea. But then the government conducted a nationwide investigation and prosecuted young people who had undergone treatment. Some plastic surgeons were imprisoned. A few were executed.
These doctors were not a threat to the regime. They merely enhanced women’s beauty with their skills. Why did the regime consider this to be such a serious crime? It wanted to suppress the human desire to be beautiful. The regime does not recognize the natural attraction or love between men and women based on beauty. It only recognizes comradely love.
The government claims that true love is an emotion based on loyalty to the Party or revolutionary ideals. Using this as a bait, they offer young women to revolutionary soldiers or people whom the government deems worthy of benefits. This is the so-called “comradely love.”
In the fall of 2000, many long-term prisoners of war returned from South Korea and were received with enthusiastic celebrations by citizens. Many had families in the South or had been captured at a very young age and grown up without a family. They longed for families, but no women in their 60s or 70s volunteered to marry them.
The government then initiated a project to find wives for them. The department responsible, the 5th Bureau, selected women, but the age limit was set at mid-40s. If comradely love is based on revolutionary ideals, why the age limit? Are older women disloyal?
The interesting fact is that the government even pressured the elderly parents of women who refused marriage to persuade them to change their minds. Newspapers promoted the children born to these former prisoners, trying to create public interest in their marriages. I wonder, what is the difference between the government arranging such marriages and selling sex?
In North Korea, selling sex is a criminal offense. Once a woman charged with prostitution was brought before a public trial, where one by one, people stood up and criticized her for her actions and her ideological impurity. The criticism went on for two hours. At the end, the Party committee chairperson in charge asked her to express her reflections on her mistakes.
“Tell us what you did wrong,” he said.
“I thought it was mine because it was attached to my body,” she said. “I didn’t know it belonged to the party organization.” This is the essence of the matter. Our sexuality may be subject to government control, but it is not ours to decide.
Is it a criminal act when individuals engage in sex on their own, but acceptable when the government orchestrates it under the guise of comradely love?
There used to be a saying among those who opposed communism: “Communism is based on collective ownership. So you don’t own your wife. She’s everyone’s.”
We learned in history that this was an absurd argument and a slanderous attempt to defame communism. But now, it no longer seems absurd. It’s clear that your wife is not yours, but the government’s. The government alone decides its value and how it is to be used.
So, why does North Korea criminalize sex? It is to make us feel guilty about our natural instincts. This way, people settle into a state of guilt and become submissive and obedient.
On the other hand, the purpose may be to create stress by suppressing sexual activity, allowing people to release that stress through activities for the Party or collective events. Or it may be to prevent the joy of sex from making other activities seem dull or boring.
Ultimately, the suppression and control of sex is a tool to maintain control over the people.
Born in Chongjin in 1990, Jang Mi was not a studious child, but under her mother’s influence, she graduated from high school and went on to university to take math and science. She worked as a wedding video editor for seven years until her defection in 2019.
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