North Korea's women break taboos to get food on the table

[ensho]

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Korea/MI27Dg01.html


North Korea's communist government frowns upon women wearing trousers, seeing it as a mark of "rotten bourgeois lifestyles". Yet, wives, literally wearing trousers, are selling goods in the local markets to supplement their husbands' meagre pay packets.

While the dads toil in decrepit factories and dismal mines, mothers sail by on bicycles to the nearby market to sell whatever sells and bring in cash that may represent the family's main income.

"Dads' wages have drastically dropped, while the money mom makes at the markets has increased significantly," Hyun Geong, an expert on North Korean affairs, told IPS in an interview. "Mothers, who are good sellers, may bring in 10-20 times more than what the fathers earn as monthly wages," said Hyun, who works for the Seoul-based Free North Korea (FNK) Radio, founded by North Korean defectors to broadcast programmes across the border.

-snip-

A new breed of street-savvy women is bringing home the bacon, breaking the Confucian ideal of the wife following two steps behind her husband in subservience.

-long snip-
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good for them - wishing them well

[redwitch]

1. The poor things have to do SOMETHING to live.

I cannot imagine living in that hellhole and trying to take care of my children.

[Denninmi]

2. Wait 5 or 10 years.

Coming soon to a country near you.

[dixiegrrrrl]

3. Sooner than later.

[Liberal_in_LA]

5. +100.

[brooklynite]

4. Who's buying the goods they're selling?

It doesn't sound as though anyone other than the elite in Pyongyang have disposable income, and if you don't live there, you can't come in to sell.

[Renew Deal]

8. I was wondering that as well.

Who has the money to buy?

[Romulox]

6. LOL. What a victory for feminism! nt

[Renew Deal]

7. I wonder if the gov't will crack down on them.

They cracked down the last time people found ways to make money. I think they cut the value of money in half and put people into further poverty.