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Mysterious Pyongyang:
Cosmetics, Beauty
Culture and
North Korea

Sung-wook Nam · Su-lan Chae ·

Ga-young Lee
Mysterious Pyongyang: Cosmetics, Beauty Culture
and
North Korea
Sung-wook Nam · Su-lan Chae · Ga-young Lee

Mysterious
Pyongyang:
Cosmetics, Beauty
Culture and
North Korea
Sung-wook Nam Su-lan Chae
Graduate School of Public Policy Asiatic Research Institute
Korea University Korea University
Seoul, Korea (Republic of) Seoul, Korea (Republic of)

Ga-young Lee
Asiatic Research Institute
Korea University
Seoul, Korea (Republic of)

ISBN 978-981-15-7702-4 ISBN 978-981-15-7703-1 (eBook)

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-7703-1

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 Preface

When I first started studying North Korea 35 years ago, I observed

that North Korean women refugees who were receiving their integration
training from resettlement centers in South Korea were very interested
in South Korean beauty culture and cosmetics. It caught my attention.
I had various questions: Do women in socialist societies regularly put
on makeup? Exactly how much makeup does the North Korean regime
allow for women? Why did the founder of North Korea Kim Il-sung
(1912–1994) encourage cosmetic production during the early years of
his regime?
Is it not contradictory that women actively participate in building a
socialist country while at the same time show interest in beauty like
fashion and cosmetics? Women who strongly shout the bold slogans of
socialism did not normally enjoy decorating their appearance and using
cosmetics—or so the prevalent prejudice used to suggest. My above ques-
tions naturally come from the assumption that ‘socialist states’ somehow
hinder beauty, glamour, etc. The logic and guess may be relied on the
way of thinking and education that Communist dictators are inhumane
and autocratic. It may be true or half true nor true. Particularly, South
Korea has felt the grave hatred toward Communism through Korean War
(1950–1953) that made the causalities of 5 million civilians and 100 thou-
sand military persons including 16 countries. No Western experts and
scholars can guess the sensitive feelings among South Korea, even though
70 years does go by. There were brutal victims in Korean Peninsula after

v
vi PREFACE

North Korean founder; Kim Il-sung suddenly attacked South Korea on

June 25, 1950. The tragic accidents have burned itself deep in ethnic
Korean heart.
There is abundance in gender and socialism studies. It may be that
beauty standards may have been different at the time of the Cold War,
but there was no lack of beauty, in both real, social life and propa-
ganda, from Cuba to Vietnam. However, even if North Korea profess
socialist society like Soviet, Eastern European countries, Vietnam, Cuba,
and other countries, Pyongyang differs from above socialist countries in
the following points. First, North Korean leadership is the first in modern
history to show a hereditary succession of three generations since its foun-
dation. Second, Kim family’s monolithic leadership system that ‘Juche’
(self-reliant) ideology supports perfectly controls the people’s external
and internal behavior in North Korea. Marx–Lenin ideology just cannot
explain the complexity of governance system in Pyongyang. Kim Il-sung
announced that ‘Juche’ (self-reliant) ideology was introduced in 1955,
declaring the independence from the Sino-Soviet conflict during Cold
War. The ideology had been abused to suppress the people. Third, nobody
can have opposite views toward the Supreme leader policy. There are
many prison camps nationwide that at least opponents of 200 thousand
imprison. There are no genuine human rights in North Korea. It is impos-
sible for anybody to understand without experiencing the reality. Many
reasons should be reduced at above level since this book does not target
North Korean politics and ideology.
Since the first inter-Korean summit in Pyongyang on June 15, 2000,
South Korea formally or informally provided various kinds of daily neces-
sities to North Korea with poor economic conditions in return for the
events that Seoul strongly requests. The items were included in cookie,
cosmetics, and toiletries. After inter-Korean relations allowed for more
exchanges and cooperation in materials and personals, I used to pay
close attention to improve appearances and makeup of North Korean
women every time I visited Pyongyang. My interest in beauty as the
fashion and makeup practices of North Korean women naturally expanded
into broader areas of adorning oneself: hairstyle, clothing, footwear, and
accessories. As macro-discourses like North Korean politics, military, and
economics hold a position of important implications, the basic necessi-
ties of the everyday life of the North Korean people—clothing, food,
housing, and consumption behavior which reveals personal taste—also
warrant academic analysis.
 PREFACE vii

The North Korean regime announced ‘an Act on Gender Equality’ in

the early stages of the administration in 1946 and encouraged women
considered by the North Korean regime as a pillar of socialism, to actively
participate in politics. The regime urged North Korean women to awaken
from their dormancy throughout 500 years of the ‘Joseon’ dynasty era
(1392–1910) until the Japanese occupation to participate in building a
socialist country. The government also built cosmetics factories through
the transformation of chemical facility operated during the Japanese colo-
nial period (1910–1945) as part of the light industry reconstruction plan
after the armistice of the Korean War in 1953. Whether this policy was a
carrot-and-stick approach or simply targeting the hearts of women’s desire
for fantastic appearances is clearly unknown. Kim Jong-Il (1942–2011),
the second-generation leader of North Korea, also frequented cosmetics
companies. Kim Jong-il inspects the production line of a cosmetics factory
in Sinuiju, North Pyongan Province, on November 24, 2008 (Fig. 1).

Fig. 1 The Korean Central News Agency releases Kim Jong-Il’s visit to the
factory
viii PREFACE

Partiality toward cosmetics was handed down generations to the third-

generation leader, Kim Jong-un (1984–present). Due to his experience
living overseas, Kim Jong-un encouraged the cosmetics industry more
vigorously than his predecessors. His field visits to the cosmetics floor
at the department store with his stylish wife, first lady, Lee Sul-joo, was
enough to instill an image of a leader inspecting the everyday lives of the
people. It was hard to believe that this person was the same inhumane
person who would murder his stepbrother Kim Jong-nam (1971–2017)
which is a rare glimpse into the duality of the monolithic leader’s ideology
of socialism. Kim Jong-nam was assassinated by a North Korean secrete
agent in Kuala Lumpur airport, Malaysia, on February 13, 2017, since
Kim Jong-un ordered to execute him because Kim Jong-nam contacted
the Western intelligence agency and leaked the clandestine inside story in
Pyongyang power family.
Joseon Shinbo, a periodical of the General Association of pro-North
Korean Residents in Japan, printed an article titled ‘Pyongyang Cosmetics
Factory Striving for Better Product Quality’ on March 17, 2015, and
reported that Kim Jong-un criticized a mascara eye makeup product
upon visiting the Pyongyang Cosmetics Factory on February 4. Kim
Jong-un took the mascara for wearing eye makeup as an example of
how the quality of North Korean makeup products was not on par with
foreign makeup products. He meticulously laid out all the problems of
the makeup from the perspective of a female consumer and said that ‘for-
eign eyeliners and mascaras stay intact even when you go into the water
but our domestic products make your eyes look like that of a raccoon
after a single yawn.’ He also ordered that the quality of cosmetics manu-
factured in the Pyongyang Factory should be as high as those of global
cosmetic powerhouses such as Lancôme, Chanel, and Christian Dior and
Shiseido cosmetics. It was reported that Kim Jong-un flaunted his insight
into cosmetics during his field guidance and also specified brand names of
globally renowned products. It was clear that Kim Jong-un has inher-
ited a love for cosmetics that has been in the family for generations.
Another point, however, is that the regime advertises his keen interest
in light industry through cosmetics to the people, even though they can’t
supply enough consumer goods. The symbolic anecdotes and manipula-
tive photographs were introduced in the article and report whenever he
visits department store and factory (Fig. 2).
Was North Korea’s policy of encouraging production of cosmetics,
which is most consumption-linked and capitalistic, a reflection of an
 PREFACE ix

Fig. 2 Kim Jong-un with first lady visited Sinuiju Cosmetics Factory on June
30, 2017

intention to provide women with high-quality products? Or it might

be a highly sophisticated governance tactic which penetrates women’s
true intentions and desire to become beautiful amidst the dire economic
circumstances of North Korea that can be easily gleaned from its propa-
ganda, “one should not grow their hair too long because there will be a
shortage to the nutrients that were supposed to be supplied to the brain
tissues.”
Due to the peculiar characteristics of North Korea’s socialist system
which strove for national development based mainly on the “second
economy” of military buildup and the cabinet economy of heavy indus-
tries since the establishment of the regime in 1948, the light industry
did not receive significant investments. The limited budget did not
enough invest in the production of the non-necessary items like elec-
tronic product, consumer goods, and fashion. These items had taken a
back seat to the weapons and heavy industry. However, there was an
exceptional item among light industry. It was surprisingly cosmetics. The
item was prioritized by Kim Il-sung decision that exactly comprehends a
x PREFACE

woman’s mind. The detailed story shall be presented in Chapters 2 and 3.

North Korea’s cosmetics manufacturing expertise is nowadays at the level
of South Korea’s expertise back in the late 1980s—the container and exte-
rior may be evaluated as an imitation of South Korean products but the
actual quality is dubious and the container fails to contain the contents,
leading to leakage.
The fact that Pyongyang regime that has successfully developed state of
the art technology and materials to launch a short-range and long-range
intercontinental ballistic missile that can be deployed to exit the Earth’s
atmosphere and reenter into the atmospheric trajectory and yet failed to
develop a pump or spray mechanism of a cosmetic container demon-
strates the serious side effects of the ‘sungun’ governance of the Kim
Jong-un regime. Some of the containers were shoddy at best due to their
outdated molding technologies. Lids were ill-fitted and the spray pump
did not function correctly in the case of liquid product containers. Using
cosmetics paradoxically created inconveniences for consumers. However,
these days, North Korean cosmetic companies are manufacturing facial
products and makeup products in addition to functional facial masks
which are referred to as ‘mi-an-mak’ (mask pack) in North Korea. Their
products are no match for South Korean products, but it is a present situ-
ation that North Korea is investing every kind of cosmetics in improving
its quality. Even if the regime tries to make a high-quality cosmetic, the
policy has no direct relation to improving the various burdensome life
like hard working in company, home, and society. Human Asia, a human
rights group and the women refugees association, hosted a talk concert
“No women in North Korea” in celebration of International Women’s
Day on March 8, 2017, to advertise the gender equality policy. North
Korea enacted law on gender equality in 1946 and attempted to exploit
women labor.
I wrote this book with a belief that the peaceful unification of Korean
Peninsula would be upon us on the day every woman in North Korea
uses South Korean cosmetics. I long for the day when the desire of
North Korean women to become beautiful will materialize. To provide
a semblance of an answer into a dualistic subject such as socialist country
policies that foster a cosmetics industry and exploit women labor, I looked
into various methods. I do not definitely agree to the assumption that
“socialist regimes do not foster cosmetic industries.”
A few potential issues can be raised as the non-specification of whether
the author regards ‘socialist’ as tantamount to ‘socially and culturally
 PREFACE xi

repressive and/or totalitarian,’ and the evidence that whatever ‘social-

ist’ is intended to mean here, those regimes do not foster the cosmetics,
glamour, and fashion industry. While it has been the case like Pol
Pot’s Cambodia for instance that hardline socialist regimes rejected
consumerism including glamour and fashion and brutalized people, this is
not a general rule. Furthermore, there is also ample evidence that socialist
has not negative stance such as consumerism (Myers B. R. 2012: 1–
42). However, the sensitive problem is always relative since absolute stan-
dard cannot be applied to the comparison between Pyongyang and other
socialist cities. Compared to another socialist country that has generous
position toward consumerism, it should be argued that North Korea has
not fostered glamor and fashion except cosmetics among light industry
(Ellen Brun and Jacques Hersh 1976: 194–279). This research originates
from the specificity of unique item, cosmetics in North Korea.
I employed three multi-dimensional methods to overcome the hand-
icap of not having on-site access, given in the heavily veiled North Korea
studies. A few people offered valuable supports in the making of this
single book. First, we procured North Korean cosmetics to accurately
analyze the quality. I would like to express my gratitude to Park Sang-
gwon of Pyeonghwa Cars Company, who purchased over 64 products
from Pyongyang and China, and Wang Chun-sun who graduated from
Kim Il-sung University as a Chinese national and received his master’s
degree and doctorate from the department of North Korean studies at
Korea University. We would not have been able to conduct a chemical
compositional analysis of actual North Korean cosmetic products for the
first time in South Korea if it had not been for Mr. Park, Mr. Wang,
and other anonymous sponsors who diligently researched and purchased
multiple types of North Korean cosmetic products. This book is also the
first of its kind in South Korea and all worlds to have analyzed all compo-
nents of 64 North Korean cosmetic products in a South Korean cosmetics
research lab. I would also like to thank Kim Bu-min and all the people at
the lab at Amore Pacific Research Center for all their hard work. Everyone
at the lab dedicated their time and resources in thoroughly analyzing the
composition of North Korean cosmetics amidst their own busy research
and testing schedule to unveil the composition of North Korean cosmetic
products.
Second, we conducted a survey of decorating beauty and cosmetic
use in North Korea through 200 North Korean women refugees. To
compensate for the limits of a written survey, we also conducted focus
xii PREFACE

group interviews with 20 refugees. Third, we systematically analyzed the

national party’s periodical, Rodong Newspaper, North Korean govern-
ment organ, and a periodical targeting women subscriber by the Korean
Central News Agency, Women of Joseon (North Korean Women). I would
add NK sources with the usual caveat about their propagandistic nature
but useful nonetheless to monitor the evolution of cultural propaganda,
women’s image, trade, consumerism in NK like North Korea today, North
Korea Trade, plus the culture & society sections of NK websites “Nae-
nara,” “Ryomyong,” “Arirang-Meari,” “Uriminzokkiri,” and above all,
“Manmulsang” with a cosmetics and fashion shopping section.
We mainly focused on understanding the intentions behind the three
leaders of North Korea, Kim Il-sung, Kim Jong-il, and Kim Jong-un
based on their comments on the cosmetics industry and their field guid-
ance tendencies. In truth, this approach is a rather useful approach in
correcting the error that may occur from conducting a binary analysis
of a vast country from only a political and military perspective. North
Korean studies conducted by South Korea is largely concentrated toward
the problems of a despotic ruling system and the nuclear threat, which
is an issue occurring daily in North Korea. The current address of North
Korean studies with a single focus on the individual leader is worrisome
in that it overlooks the micro-aspect of the country in terms of its inner
workings and the awareness of its people. This book is an attempt to strike
a better balance in the rather polarized state of North Korean studies.
The book is composed of six chapters based on these three research
approaches. In Chapter 1, ‘Women in North Korea: Ideal and Reality,’ the
authors presented the literature reviews of the research on consumerism
and making appearance of women in socialist countries, and also heroine
discourse under the Kim Jong-un regime in North Korea. We highlighted
the perspective and life of North Korean women. The first chapter is an
elaboration of the more basic, core elements of a woman’s life: marriage,
family, and the search for beauty. In Chapter 2, ‘Beauty Culture and
Perspective of North Korean Women,’ we analyzed the style and makeup
techniques of North Korean women.
In Chapter 3, ‘Cosmetics made in North Korea,’ we introduced
actual North Korean cosmetic products while illustrating North Korea’s
cosmetic industry-related policies and the status of cosmetics factories in
North Korea. In Chapter 4, 64 North Korean cosmetic products and
its chemical compositional analysis results are displayed. Toxic ingredi-
ents and multiple raw materials unearthed from the analysis will serve as
 PREFACE xiii

immensely interesting research materials. In Chapter 5, we investigated

how the two Koreas differ in terms of perception of beauty and makeup
cultures. Cross-analysis was conducted on the results with demographic
characteristics factored in the analysis. Chapter 6 mainly diagnose the
economic condition of North Korea since its development can upgrade
the cosmetics industry. Without the improvement of the light industry
and the mix and blending technology of chemical materials, any company
can’t product the high-quality cosmetics in a short period. They inevitably
depend on the general economy of the country.
My co-authors Su-lan, Chae and Ga-young, Lee along with other
researchers at the Asiatic Research Institute at Korea University have dili-
gently and faithfully fulfilled their assigned roles and played a crucial
role in publishing this book within our schedule. The participation of
women researchers was inevitable seeing that we were studying a non-
masculine area such as women’s cosmetics. I hope they can advance
into experts in North Korean studies. Ph.D. candidate, Bae Jin metic-
ulously analyzed the periodical of the Women’s Association of North
Korea, ‘Women of Joseon’ and contributed greatly in gaining insight into
the intentions of the North Korean regime. Jung Yoo-suk, researcher
at the Export-Import Bank of Korea, played a crucial role in managing
North and South Economic Research Institute so that our researchers can
concentrate on their research. Researcher Oh Joon-chul and Baek Yeon-
ju organized the chemical compositional analysis we received from the
Amorepacific Research Institute and photographed each cosmetic product
to aid the understanding of our potential readers. Researcher Kim Kyung-
mook systematically organized the accumulated North Korean data and
contributed immensely to understanding North Korean policies. Moon
Gwan-hyun from the Yonhap News Agency gave us access to precious and
valuable photos and images on North Korea. Accountability for analytical
errors and limitations that may exist in the book despite enormous effort
by the younger researchers lies with the author.
My interest is to analyze the governing style and characteristics
of Pyongyang through women’s life and beauty culture, particularly
cosmetics. It will be the earliest book of its kind in the women’s life and
beauty culture of socialist country, North Korea, and other socialist coun-
tries by the analysis of cosmetic, even if there are research on clothes.
I have always intended to attempt systematic analysis of North Korean
cosmetics for the past few years. I tried to conduct a comprehensive and
systematic analysis but was unable to do so due to my occupation as a
xiv PREFACE

public servant and my commitments to the academia. It was in early

2018 when I finally started writing this book, after the book proposal
was selected by the Amorepacific Scholarship Foundation. This book
would not have existed if not for the generous supports like the Chem-
ical Compositional Analysis of North Korean Cosmetics in laboratory and
research funds from Seo Kyung-bae, President of Amorepacific. I would
like to express my utmost gratitude to those at the foundation who work
all day to materialize the beauty of Korea and Asia. Lastly, I would like to
extend my gratitude to my editor, for publishing such a visually beautiful
book.

Seoul, Korea (Republic of) Professor Sung-wook Nam

April 2020 On behalf of the authors

References
B.R. Myers. 2012. The Cleanest Race: How North Koreans See Themselves and
Why It Matters. New York: Melville House Publishing.
Ellen, Brun, and Jacques Hersh. 1976. Socialist Korea: A Case Study in the
Strategy of Economic Development. New York: Monthly Review Press.
 Contents

1 Women in North Korea: Ideal and Reality 1

1.1 Literature Review of the Research on Consumerism
in Socialist Countries 1
1.2 Heroine Discourse Under the Kim Jong-un Regime 6
1.3 North Korean Women Are Flowers 29
1.4 Gender Equality/Women-Related Policies in North
Korea 33
1.5 How Women Are Treated in North Korea? 40
1.6 Dating and Marriage in North Korea 44
1.7 North Korean Women and Wedded Bliss 52
References 59

2 The Beauty Culture and Perspective of North Korean

Women 61
2.1 The North Korean Beauty Style 61
2.2 Make-Up Techniques in North Korea 120
References 139

3 North Korean Policy for Cosmetic Industry 141

3.1 Government Policies to Support the Cosmetics Industry 141
3.2 Cosmetic Factories in North Korea 154
3.3 North Korean Cosmetics Introduction 173
Reference 186

xv
xvi CONTENTS

4 Chemical Compositional Analysis of North Korean

Cosmetics 187
4.1 Present Situation of North Korean Cosmetics 187
4.2 Chemical Compositional Analysis 194

5 A Comparison of North and South Korea: Differences

in Perception of Beauty and Makeup Practices/Culture 271
5.1 Demographic Characteristics 272
5.2 Implications 273
5.3 Cross-Analysis 295

6 North Korea’s Economic Development and Cosmetic

Industry Outlook 301
6.1 UN Sanctions Against North Korea and the North
Korean Economy 301
6.2 North Korea’s Fourfold Economy 306
6.3 Future Prospects for the North Korean Cosmetic
Industry 313
6.4 K-Beauty and South Korean Cosmetics in North Korea 318
References 325

References 327

Index 335
North Korea main cities Source National Geographic Information Institute.
(http://www.ngil.go.kr/world/koreamap_en.html)
 List of Figures

Fig. 1.1 A North Korean Couple getting married (Source Yonhap

News Agency) 51
Fig. 2.1 Ri Sol-ju at age 16 (Source Yonhap News Agency) 65
Fig. 2.2 A young Kim Jong-il with his birth mother, Kim
Jong-suk (Source Yonhap News Agency) 66
Fig. 2.3 Hong Yong-hui and Oh Mi-ran (Source Yonhap News
Agency; Institute for Peace Affairs) 69
Fig. 2.4 People’s actor Kim Jong-hwa (Source Yonhap News
Agency) 70
Fig. 2.5 Kim Yeong-suk in the story of Chun-hyang (Source
Institute for Peace Affairs) 71
Fig. 2.6 North Korean women waitress at the event for the 2015
reunion of separated families between the two Koreas
(Source Yonhap News Agency) 72
Fig. 2.7 North Korean delegates at the August 15th National
Reunification Conference (Source Yonhap News Agency) 77
Fig. 2.8 Jo Myeong-ae (purple jacket) (Source Yonhap News
Agency) 78
Fig. 2.9 North Korean clothes (Source Women of Joseon
Magazine) 79
Fig. 2.10 The elementary school uniform (Source Yonhap News
Agency) 84
Fig. 2.11 The secondary school uniform (Source Yonhap News
Agency) 85

xix
xx LIST OF FIGURES

Fig. 2.12 The North Korean university student uniform before

2015 (Source Yonhap News Agency) 87
Fig. 2.13 The North Korean university student uniform since 2015
(Source Yonhap News Agency) 87
Fig. 2.14 The Youth League’s outfit (Source Yonhap News Agency) 89
Fig. 2.15 The Youth League’s prom dress (Source Yonhap News
Agency) 89
Fig. 2.16 A Mirae Store staff member in a red vest and skirt,
Pyongyang (Source Yonhap News Agency) 90
Fig. 2.17 Pyongyang’s fast-food center, “Samtaesung” (Source
Yonhap News Agency) 91
Fig. 2.18 The Moranbong Band in unconventional costumes
(Source Yonhap News Agency) 94
Fig. 2.19 Ri Sol-ju making an official appearance (Source Yonhap
News Agency) 96
Fig. 2.20 The oetae hairstyle (similar to French braid hairstyle, left) 98
Fig. 2.21 The ssangtae style (similar to two French braid hairstyles,
right) (Source Korea University’s Asiatic Research
Institute) 98
Fig. 2.22 The recommended hairstyles of the Women of Joseon
Magazine (Source Women of Joseon Magazine) 101
Fig. 2.23 Different eye make-up styles in South Korea (Source
Korea University’s Asiatic Research Institute) 129
Fig. 2.24 A brown-haired Ri Sol-ju (Source Yonhap News Agency) 134
Fig. 3.1 Kim Jong-il at the Pyongyang Cosmetics Factory (Source
Yonhap News) 146
Fig. 3.2 Kim Il-sung at the Sinuiju Cosmetics Factory (Source
Yonhap News) 148
Fig. 3.3 Kim Jong-un on field guidance at Ryongaksan Soap
Factory (Source Yonhap News) 150
Fig. 3.4 Kim Jong-un and Ri Sol-ju on their guidance tour at
Mirae Store (Source Yonhap News) 155
Fig. 3.5 Workers’ Party Organs (Source Rewritten from
the opened material from Ministry of Unification
[www.unikorea.go.kr]) 157
Fig. 3.6 Government Organs (Source Rewritten from the
opened material from Ministry of Unification
[www.unikorea.go.kr]) 158
Fig. 3.7 Organizational Chart of the State Academy of Sciences
(Source Rewritten from the opened material from
Ministry of Unification [www.unikorea.go.kr]) 159
 LIST OF FIGURES xxi

Fig. 3.8 Inside the Sinuiju Cosmetics Factory (Source Yonhap

News) 165
Fig. 3.9 Kim Jong-un on his field guidance at Sinuiju Cosmetics
Factory (Source Yonhap News) 166
Fig. 3.10 Facial skincare line made of aloe extract (Source Rodong
Newspaper, The ChosonSinbo) 169
Fig. 3.11 Kim Jong-un on his field guidance at Pyongyang
Cosmetics Factory (Source Rodong Newspaper, The
ChosonSinbo) 170
Fig. 3.12 Sinuiju Cosmetics Factory (Source The Rodong
Newspaper) 175
Fig. 3.13 Women browsing to purchases cosmetics at Pyongyang
Department Store (Source Yonhap News) 176
Fig. 3.14 Gaesong Koryeo Ginseng Cosmetics Set 177
Fig. 4.1 Compositional analysis of 64 cosmetic products 191
Fig. 4.2 Identification of unidentified ingredients 192
Fig. 4.3 Listed ingredients not detected 192
Fig. 4.4 Non-listed ingredients detected in the compositional
analysis 193
Fig. 4.5 The chemicals defined as potentially harmful in South
Korea 193
Fig. 5.1 North Korea women’s interest in physical beauty 275
Fig. 5.2 Reasons those North Korean women are unable to pursue
physical beauty 276
Fig. 5.3 North Korean women’s interest in makeup 279
Fig. 5.4 The age that the respondents started makeup in North
Korea 280
Fig. 5.5 Pathways those North Korean women learn how to wear
makeup or get related information 281
Fig. 5.6 Usage of shampoo and conditioner in North Korea 286
Fig. 5.7 Experience of following a celebrity’s makeup 287
Fig. 5.8 The respondents’ opinion on whether the makeup
cultures of North and South Korea are different 291
Fig. 5.9 The respondents’ opinion on the quality of South Korean
cosmetics 293
Fig. 6.1 Chairman Kim Jong-un and Ri Sol-ju, tour South Korean
brand LANEIGE cosmetics store in the department
(Source Yonhap News) 322
 List of Tables

Table 3.1 North Korea’s Light Industry Policy Goals mentioned

in the New Year’s Address of Kim Jong-un (2012–2020) 152
Table 3.2 Major North Korean Chemical Daily Necessities
Companies’ Investment Trend since 2000 161
Table 3.3 Comparison of cosmetics terminologies between South
and North Koreas 174
Table 4.1 The analyzed cosmetic items and manufacturers 189
Table 4.2 A list of cosmetic products by factory and company 190
Table 5.1 Age groups of respondents 272
Table 5.2 The years when respondents migrated to South Korea 272
Table 5.3 The category of respondents’ vocations in North Korea 274
Table 5.4 Reasons that some women do not try to have a
beautiful appearance 277
Table 5.5 The makeup steps of the respondents back in North
Korea 278
Table 5.6 Places where the respondents had purchased cosmetic
products in North Korea 281
Table 5.7 The effect of South Korean cosmetic products
purchased in North Korea or the third country 283
Table 5.8 The respondents’ favorite North Korean brands in
North Korea 284
Table 5.9 The reasons for not wearing makeup in North Korea 285
Table 5.10 North Korean men’s interest in makeup 289
Table 5.11 North Korean women’s opinion on South Korean
women’s makeup culture and practices 290

xxiii
xxiv LIST OF TABLES

Table 5.12 The respondents’ favorite cosmetic functions in South

Korea 292
Table 5.13 The difficulties the respondents experience when using
cosmetics in South Korea 294
Table 5.14 The analysis of the correlations between five items on
North Korean people’s awareness of physical beauty 296
Table 5.15 The cross-analysis between the degree of North Korean
women’s makeup and marital status in North Korea 298
Table 5.16 The cross-analysis between the economic status and the
cosmetic seller in North Korea 299
 CHAPTER 1

Women in North Korea: Ideal and Reality

1.1 Literature Review of the Research

on Consumerism in Socialist Countries
Under the traditional socialist system, studies of women’s material
consumption have been conducted around the cases of the former Soviet
Union and Eastern Europe. The former Soviet Union, Eastern European
countries, and the People’s Republic of China were socialist systems like
North Korea, but the political characteristics of the similar systems vary
from country to country. Unlike the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe,
which advocate communism based on traditional Marxist-Leninism,
North Korea emphasizes the ‘Juche’ (self-reliant) ideology that adheres
to the independent route. Due to the influence of the ‘Juche’ idea, North
Korea’s politics, economy, and culture are unique examples that are hard
to see even in the socialist countries. The main difference is that power is
being inherited by three generations during the fourth industrial revolu-
tion in the twenty-first century. The various characteristics of the dynasty
that still emphasize the absolute loyalty and obedience of the people
to the leader are still most important. Therefore, the economic activity
and consumption behavior of women in the Soviet Union and Eastern
Europe showed a significant difference from that of North Korea. This
part summarizes the existing research on Soviet and Eastern European
consumerism by western researchers. Various existing studies have been
conducted on North Korean women. Representative examples include

© The Author(s) 2021 1

N. Sung-wook et al., Mysterious Pyongyang: Cosmetics,
Beauty Culture and North Korea,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-7703-1_1
2 S. NAM ET AL.

studies on women’s economic role in North Korea’s economic crisis,

gender awareness, clothing, and appearance.
This section is intended to help readers understand this book by
condensing and introducing foreign researchers’ study on women beauty
culture and consumerism in socialist countries and North Korea. This
book seeks to open new fields in North Korean women’s research.
In the research on women in North Korea, as well as in the Soviet
Union and Eastern Europe, research on women’s cosmetic consump-
tion, beauty culture, and production policies of North Korean authorities
has concretely never been conducted. This book is intended to present
the prospects as well as the production and consumption of cosmetics
related to the appearance of North Korean women for the first time.
The followings are the existing research by the western researchers on
the consumerism of fashion for women’s appearance and its culture in
Socialist countries like North Korea, as well as in the Soviet Union and
Eastern Europe. The study of scholars from South Korea is introduced in
detail in Sect. 1.2.
The research explores mass discourse on consumption and official
attitudes about consumer goods (mostly clothes) in the Soviet Union
from 1917 up to the beginning of the 1980s. Based on media discourse
analysis, the historical epoch was split into four periods according to
the changes of dominant frames in official ideology of consumption
in Soviet culture (Olga Gurova 2006: 91–97). The analysis included
that in the 1917–1920s, the frame of everyday asceticism and critics
of pre-Revolutionary patterns of consumption such as philistinism and
conspicuous consumption dominated. In the second part of the 1930s,
the idea of “cultureness” (“kulturnost”) was raised, and the possessing
of material goods was rehabilitated. In the 1950–1960s, the imitation of
western consumer patterns was critiqued by the Soviet authorities. In the
1970s, the idea of dematerialization (“razveschestvlenie”) of everyday life
became of current importance.
In this article, it is demonstrated that the ideology of consumption
was not consistent and homogeneous during the whole Soviet Era, it
was changing because of political, cultural, economics, and everyday life
transformations. The question of the ideological context of the history
of consumption in Soviet culture was discussed. “Ideology” was under-
stood as a system of concepts, ideas, myths, and images by means of which
people estimate and experience real conditions of their existence. Such an
approach to ideology allowed investigating a structural context of daily
 1 WOMEN IN NORTH KOREA: IDEAL AND REALITY 3

life of Soviet people and a context of their attitudes toward things. Based
on discourse analysis, four main stages were defined. In the 1917–1920s,
the ideology of everyday asceticism and revolutionary reorganization of
life dominated. In the 1930s, the idea of “kulturnost” prevailed, which
promoted rehabilitation of coziness and consumer values. In the 1950–
1960s, ideological opposition between Soviet Union and the West got
special attention, which resulted in the development of the idea of Soviet
taste. The discourse of the 1970s was built around the frame of dema-
terialization. Thus, in this article it was shown that the ideology of
consumption, which regulated the attitudes toward consumer goods, was
not monolithic during the whole period, and the official attitudes toward
clothes and consumption were different in different periods of Soviet
history. Such transformations were complex combinations of changes in
politics, economics, culture, and daily life.
Some researchers highly contributed to the growing body of scholar-
ship on consumption and consumerism behind the Iron Curtain. This
insightful and elegantly edited collection sets out to explore Cold War
Eastern Europe “beyond the one-dimensional images of long shopping
lines, shabby apartment blocks, bare shelves, and outdated fashions.”
Spanning a broad range of regions and decades, the volume traverses
the terrain of consumer culture in nine countries (including the under-
studied countries of Bulgaria and Romania), from the aftermath of
World War II to the disintegration of the Communist Bloc in the late
1980s. With a focus on specific products and individual consumer expe-
riences, the paper titled “Communism Unwrapped: Consumption in
Cold War Eastern Europe” constructs a well-balanced, nuanced, and—
at times—unexpected profile of the socialist citizen-consumer, while also
investigating the complexity of consumption practices in centrally planned
economies. As is inevitable for any collection of case studies, the analysis
is neither thematically nor historically exhaustive. Nevertheless, without
attempting to present an overarching historical chronology of the devel-
opment of Eastern European consumption, the volume offers new and
intriguing perspectives on individual consumer experiences within the
context of broader sociopolitical and historical developments in the
Communist Bloc. As such, the collection under review is, without a
doubt, a touchstone for the study of consumption in Cold War Eastern
Europe. Uniformly well-written and thoroughly researched, the book will
be of interest to scholars of Eastern European history and culture, as well
4 S. NAM ET AL.

as to any reader wishing to acquire fresh insights into daily life under
communism (Paulina Bren and Mary Neuburger 2012: 330–332).
Another research describes the agony and pain of women who perceive
themselves as ugly, who feel victimized by excess hair, weight, asymmet-
rical physical features, color, and even gender itself. They believe they
fall outside the standards of desired appearance and they thus experience
themselves as deviant and lacking in social value. The author claims that
such awareness develops because “a lot of people are going around with
a lot of hostile stuff” looking for somebody to victimize, taking every
opportunity to humiliate those who do not meet the societal criteria for
desired appearance. The stories related here reveal how such encounters
led to self-doubt and self-hate for these women and the constant search to
hide their imperfections. With this frame of mind, they can never achieve
a sense of adequacy (Wendy Chapkis 1999: 1–30).
There is also research of description that socialist government has
sought to shape the meaning of consumption for their citizens, as well
as to control the production and distribution of consumer goods. The
author explains concretely ideological representations of goods, services,
and lifestyles aimed to prevent popular unrest, to motivate people to
work, and to demonstrate the justice and superiority of socialism in
contrast to capitalism. This entry focuses on the ideology of consump-
tion. Although the emphasis here is on the USSR, Soviet ideology served
as a template for many other socialist governments (Jane Zavisca 2011:
1–20).
The research also explores that the representation of an ideal female
body in North Korea by examining women’s fashion as manifested in
visual media such as stage productions, films, magazine illustrations,
paintings, and posters. The author ultimately argues that visual media
in North Korea are not merely consumerist objects but by far the most
important form of bodily discipline. Their functions are wide in scope—
they educate, entertain, and mobilize people. In a society where ideals
shape reality itself, the way in which visual images are coordinated and
circulated is far from accidental. He explains that in North Korea, the
images of women on stage and screen function as models to emulate, thus
imposing ideal bodily practices onto viewers. Examining the dress codes
of female protagonists on stage and screen illuminates how the North
Korean state has set out to craft an ideal female body by constantly nego-
tiating revolutionary masculinity and traditional femininity (Suk-Young
Kim 2011: 159–191).
 1 WOMEN IN NORTH KOREA: IDEAL AND REALITY 5

It is meaningful to explore how North Korea’s economic crisis caused

changes in women’s economic participation. It will also analyze the
impact of these new economic roles on the lives of women and examine
the broader implications of these roles for the status of women in
North Korea. The North Korean economic crisis changed the pattern of
women’s economic participation, pulling women out of the formal labor
market and driving them into the informal private economic sector. It also
forced several women to leave their homeland in order to provide support
for their own and their families’ livelihoods. The new economic roles that
women have assumed in the wake of the food crisis have affected women’s
lives in many negative ways, resulting in an increase in their workloads, as
well as an increase in the amount of sexual violence and stress of family
breakdowns they experience. At the same time, however, these new roles
have given women stronger voices in family decision-making matters and
allowed them to develop, to some degree, a sense of self-consciousness
and awareness of their own rights. Nevertheless, the fact that women have
been engaged in new economic activities does not imply that they also
have a high likelihood of advancing their socioeconomic status. To the
contrary, women’s defection from their homeland does not allow them to
voice their opinions in matters related to the existing gender inequalities.
Moreover, North Korean women are not considered capable of forming
a critical mass, as they lack economic, social, political, and organizational
resources to collectively voice their discontent. Furthermore, the neo-
Confucian tradition of male superiority that is still firmly entrenched in
the society is a major barrier that remains to be overcome (Kyung-Ae
Park 2011: 159–177).
It is also important to analyze the role of female entrepreneurs in
the transition of North Korea. Since the collapse of North Korea’s
command economy in the 1990s, many women have become voluntary
entrepreneurs. This remarkable feature of North Korean marketization
cannot be adequately explained by female entrepreneur (FE) deficit
premises, which highlight women’s supposed shortcomings in what is
considered a male enterprise. Based on in-depth interviews with female
North Korean defectors, and viewing entrepreneurship as a catalyst for
sociocultural change, this paper questions how FEs emerged in North
Korea and whether women’s market participation influences gender rela-
tions, or attitudes toward the North Korean regime. There have been
noticeable changes in gender roles, son preference, and choice of marriage
partners. Their findings suggest that female entrepreneurship has the
6 S. NAM ET AL.

potential to both challenge and support the North Korean system. This
research significantly advances scholarship on gender and entrepreneur-
ship by adopting a constructionist approach to gender and transcending
the prevalence of descriptive analysis of gendered entrepreneurial practices
(Kyungja Jung et al. 2018: 19–27).

1.2 Heroine Discourse

Under the Kim Jong-un Regime
1.2.1 Women’s Policy of North Korea through ‘Women of Joseon’
With the enactment of the law on gender equality in July of 1946, North
Korea propagated that women are entitled to the same rights as men in
every area of politics, economy, and culture. According to the law and
related regulations, North Korea also advocates that their revolutionary
actions guarantee the dignity, rights, and freedom, and women satisfy with
their life by taking an active role in state affairs and social politics. Despite
the North Korean drive to promote women’s participation in society after
the announcement of gender equality policies, little progress to improve
women status has been made in reality. Legislation and policy in every area
seem to help promote gender equality, but looking closely, one sees that
it has not brought actual changes in the lives of women. Gender equality
policy has allowed women to play a more extended role than before. With
more women participating in society, they are expected to take on an
additional role as the “working mother” on top of their traditional role as
“diligent housewife.” This extended role made them busier and prompted
an increased social demand for women.
Notably, women’s active participation in economic activities during
severe economic difficulties in the mid-1990s brought drastic changes
in awareness of gender roles. Women, whose primary role was to be a
good mother and dedicated wife since the Joseon Dynasty period (1392–
1910) and Japanese colonial rule (1910–1945), were also expected to
play the secondary role of being a contributor to revolution and to
be one important pillar of the socialist revolution (Ryang 2000: 323–
349). “Women are powerful forces that buttress one of the wagon
wheels” (Rodong Newspaper, March 8, 2005) is a North Korean propa-
ganda phrase that indicates the symbolic role of women in building a
socialist state. Moreover, women are required to take on a third role as
being a supporter of the poor household economy due to a depressed
 1 WOMEN IN NORTH KOREA: IDEAL AND REALITY 7

national economy—becoming a supposed type of “superwoman.” Even

under these circumstances where women are forced to play multiple
roles, gender equality laws still see women as inferior to men and do
not give palpable consideration and respect toward women (Lee, M. K.
2005: 154–178). North Korean women with their “triple roles” are addi-
tionally haunted by the traditional patriarchal culture that favors men
over women, and this triggers skepticism that the regime’s effort to
promote gender equality is nothing but an excuse to exploit the women’s
workforce (Jung et al. 2018: 19–27).
The existing research in this area uses similar literature and dates to
the late-1990s, which will be briefly covered. After the 1990s, various
researches on North Korea were launched that was affected by the post-
Cold War and an effort to rightly understand North Korea. A refined
analysis was first done to investigate the specific role of the family in the
coordination mechanism in which family becomes the basic economic unit
for survival. In line with such research trends, empirical policy research
was conducted on the concept of North Korean women and family. More-
over, systemic research on women and related family policy has increased
general understanding toward women, family policy, and participation in
political activities and economic life in North Korea. Some of them were
connected to feminist studies and provided a comparison between North
Korea and South Korea in terms of family, education, jobs, economic
activity, status, and policy. Additionally, the subject of patriarchal socialism
and related family policy has also been handled in systematic research
attempts. Recently in the 2000s, the subject of women-related policy
and legal systems under the North Korean regime has been dealt with
in various research articles.
As food shortage aggravated by the North Korean Famine in the mid-
1990s directly and indirectly affected the entirety of North Korea with
small and big changes, the subject of food shortage, the changing role
of women, and its awareness has been examined in several papers. The
subject of women and family for reunification of Korean Peninsula has
also been handled in several works, mostly by the North Korean Women
Development Institute. The existing research put focus on interpreting
the authorities’ official publications and analyzing their implications due
to restricted access to the site. Implication analysis was based on the
review of the North Korean official propaganda organ: Rodong News-
paper, a women propaganda journal: Women of Joseon, various North
Korean references, movies, and surveys of North Korean refugees in
8 S. NAM ET AL.

South Korea. Women of Joseon was intensively analyzed through the

work of Kim Gwi-ok et al. (2000), Park Young-ja (2004), Kim Seok-
hyang (2006), and Mun Jang-soon (2008). In the papers, which analyzed
Women of Joseon together with the Rodong Newspaper, novels, and
movies, Kim Gwi-ok et al. (2000) study emphasizes that women issues
are not limited to conflict between men and women, but rather are the
result of North Korean-socialism traits and environmental conditions.
In a recent study, Park (2004) examined the Rodong Newspaper
and the “Kim Il-sung Writing Collection” and studied the formation
and distortion of gender equality policy in North Korea with a focus
on Women of Joseon. Kim (2006) analyzed the logical structure of the
discourse on how North Korea officially explains the concept of gender
equality and women rights. Mun (2008) interprets that the new changes
found in North Korea boil down to women’s increased involvement in
economic activity and a more active role in society. The Ewha Insti-
tute of Unification Studies (2010) attempted to examine differences
between the present and future of North Korea through the life of North
Korean women and to interpret the changing awareness prompted by util-
itarian socialism. Previous studies on Women of Joseon argued that women
took on a bigger role and their status partially improved after the food
shortage, but women themselves do not try to raise issues within the patri-
archal society and are passively assimilated to its culture. Another research,
however, seeks to reflect the recent North Korean ruling practice, with
a focus on Kim Jong-un’s women’s policies made after 2012 that have
rarely been addressed in previous studies (Nam Sung-wook et al. 2017:
51–83).

1.2.2 The Symbols of Miranda and Credenda

The research aims, which utilize the new classification method, take an
in-depth look at women’s policies in North Korea by classifying heroines
from the Journal. The study introduces a slightly different method that
is distinct from the existing research on Women of Joseon. As opposed to
the precedent research focusing on a time series analysis, the authors have
introduced a cross-section analysis of 5 years of women’s policies during
Kim Jong-un’s reign, with the key word “heroine.” The ruling function
of the journal can be explained by the two theories of social science. First,
according to the agenda-setting function of mass media, it gives people
 1 WOMEN IN NORTH KOREA: IDEAL AND REALITY 9

the evidence for what they need to concentrate on. Mass media guides the
public’s attention toward potential agendas that call for their attention.
As North Korea completely controls its mass media, they put their
desired agenda at the forefront, which invariably reflects the party’s views,
and thereby distribute their propaganda. Conversely, by grasping closely
the highlighted points of North Korea’s mass media, inferring the poli-
cy’s purposes that guide North Korea’s actions, it will be possible for
researcher to forecast the next measures. Second, the theory of political
image manipulation systematically explains the phenomenon that leader
and elites want to make the masses believe their policy by skillfully manip-
ulating images like symbols and stories. Dr. C. E Merriam classified the
political symbols as Miranda, a symbol of praise like anecdote, beauti-
fication of history, and a parade, and Credenda, a symbol of trust like
constitution, creed, and ideology (Merriam, Charles Edward, 1934: 1–
50). The dictators try to reinforce the loyalty of the mass to the power by
heightening the sense of unity. Dr. Paul Joseph Goebbels (1897–1945),
minister of communication for Nazi Germany in 1930s, effectively manip-
ulated the image of a demagogue, Adolf Hitler (1889–1945) by mixing
the symbols of Miranda and Credenda.
North Korea has periodically published the magazine controlled by the
regime through demonstrating many cases of Miranda and persuaded the
people to unresistingly follow its policy. North Korea has been striving
to find heroes through creating periodic movements of social change
since the foundation of the regime. A classic example of this would
be a movement entitled “Learn through Jung Chun-sil” since 1983
under the guidance of North Korean founder Kim Il-sung order. In
this policy promotion system, all people have to doubtlessly benchmark
virtual characters. The North Korean regime promotes its policies by
using the technique of creating heroines of desirable women who actively
participate in the construction of socialism. Policies which tactfully find
heroes and encourage people to work hard as if they themselves are
heroes, originate from the “Stakhanov movement” in the Soviet Union in
1935. According to the authority’s agitation, every mining worker must
follow his extravagant performance in coal extraction, although the target
quantity was swollen.
Women of Joseon can be one exemplary model that puts across the
authority’ policy and explores various types of “the heroine.” Heroines
in the journal are categorized into five types of ideal womanhood—the
hardworking woman, the woman revolutionary, the professional woman,
10 S. NAM ET AL.

the devoted wife and wise mother, and the woman of military support
and volunteering. Those five types were used to identify the reality
of the regime’s women policy and infer the implications of the policy
made during the reign period Kim Jong-un in what is known as the
third-generation succession since 2012.
For an overview of the women’s policy in North Korea from a macro-
scopic perspective, the Rodong Newspaper and the North Korean Central
News Agency also have been consulted to understand the overall trends,
and for a detailed approach and substantiation, 60 volumes of Women
of Joseon from January 2012 to December 2016 were subject to anal-
ysis. This is the monthly journal published by the Joseon Democratic
Women Federation. Its first issue came out in September of 1946, with
739 issues as of late 2019. It is specially designed to advocate North
Korean propaganda to women as an official medium that disseminates the
regime’s policy to women in the field. Due to the peculiarity of research
on North Korea, such literature is viewed as the sole channel that enables
us to closely look into specific North Korean policies and principles. The
research attempts to provide a critical analysis of the contents and inten-
tions of women policy advocated by the North Korean regime and induce
the research findings that will help to bring about gender equality for a
united Korea in the future.

1.2.3 Mechanisms of Women Policy in North Korea

North Korea builds and implements national projects seasonally and
annually to achieve economic and social policy targets. The Labor Party
builds project plans and sets production targets. Then, the press publicizes
and instigates plans finalized by the authorities and party to the people.
For example, Women of Joseon strongly encourages women to commit to
duty and responsibility related to their execution of state projects.
The North Korean authorities are responsible for referring the regime’s
policy to public opinion through a working-level organization of the
Joseon Democratic Women Federation established in a frontline admin-
istrative zone in November 1945. The federation is naturally operated
as the channel that expedites the project execution at the right time
and establishes plans for project implementation according to the local
situation. Some of the federation members are responsible for ideology
education. Known as the education teacher, they are eloquent speakers
from the labor unit for instigation and propaganda and teach ideology
 1 WOMEN IN NORTH KOREA: IDEAL AND REALITY 11

for federation members by subunits. Ideology education is about teaching

greatness of great men from Mt. Paektu (direct descendant of North
Korea founder Kim Il-sung), nationalism, instilling communism, uplifting
morality, the leaders’ historical speeches, orders, directions, and the
party’s policy. They strain to instill ideas and policy into women. Ideology
education claims that patriotism is the dedication to the Supreme leader
through implementing plans built by the party.
The Labor Party, cabinet, women federation are operated as one united
body to involve women in the policies. In the process, the party and
cabinet are responsible for the overall planning and execution, the press
publicizing, disseminating, propagating, and instigating the party’s plan,
and the federation offering ideology education to induce more involve-
ment from women. Based on this organized system, the North Korean
authorities make use of female workforces to push for the state strategy in
tactical manners. According to the theory of the Professor János Kornai,
operation of a socialist economic system causes chronic labor shortages.
North Korea is no exception (János Kornai 1992: 54–102). Someone
should fill the labor shortage created by North Korean men who are obli-
gated to do 10 years of military service. Thus, North Korea attempts to
utilize women workforces in efforts to address its chronic labor shortage
problem in the name of gender equality, economic growth, and socialist
state construction.
The journal argues that exploitation and feudal practices of the
Japanese colonial rule remained even after the independence from
Japanese occupation in 1945. It propagates that in 1946, Kim Il-
sung made thorough preparation for women to exercise gender equality
through active struggle, believing that the desire to realize gender equality
was a very complicated and difficult issue. With the land reform law
promulgated on March 5, 1946, the regime divided the land into similar
proportions for men and women in efforts to realize gender equality in
the lives of working people. Moreover, the law on gender equality that
was announced on July 30, 1946 stipulates in its Article 1 that “women
are entitled to the same rights as men in every area of state affairs,
economy, culture, society, and politics” (2016, 4th: 10–11).
At the initial stage of the regime’s establishment, it quickly built
the legal framework for gender equality. The North Korean authorities
promulgated gender equality law to free women from social restraints
arguing that women should be the leaders of society and their own fate
and commit to the construction of a socialist state. It also maintains that
12 S. NAM ET AL.

together with men, women are the one pillar and wheel that contribute
to the construction of the socialist state, and so they should perform the
work just as men do in the field of construction, agriculture, and mining,
and in doing so, they can truly be liberated from patriarchal society.
North Korea enacted “family law” at the Supreme People’s Assembly on
October 24 in 1990 and revised and supplemented the old version in
1993 and again in 2004.
The eye-catching part of “family law” is that the traditional family
system and heritage has been recovered. Under Chapter 1, Article 6 of
the family law (protection principles of children and mothers), mothers
shall do their duty of caring for and disciplining children. Under Article
35 (relationship between grandparents and grandchildren), grandchildren
shall be responsible for the healthy life of their grandparents when they
grow older. This is to pass the state duty onto individuals by extending
the scope of relatives to a wider area of family support. “Family law”
stresses the importance of a mother’s role at the official level and extends
the scope of family support, tightening the state control of family forma-
tion and disintegration. State regulation and involvement in family affairs
eventually added to the burdens women already faced. The responsibility
for the social welfare program also shifted from the authorities to women
with the revised laws, forcing women to perform diversified and multiple
tasks. With the enactment of laws that call for the multiple roles of
women, legal responsibility that women should bear has been expanded.

1.2.4 Five Types of the Heroine in North Korea

Women of Joseon allots more than half of its pages for introducing ideal
womanhood in North Korea. In a journal of some 60 or so pages,
over 30 pages contain articles that vividly describe the sacrifices of hero-
ines and the rest of the journal covers topics from Kim Jong-un to
local maps, explanations of the ‘Juche’ (self-reliant) and military-first
ideas, and common knowledge like “how to raise chickens in winter.”
In the “Socialist Morality and Life” section, there are stories titled “My
Daughter-in-Law,” “Harmonious Family” and “Women with Fidelity Can
Grow Flowers Even on a Rock,” showing examples of a good wife and
wise mother to set a precedent for women. In the “Rightly Set Lifestyle of
Socialism” section, the journal deals with women’s dress codes and their
role of teaching language to children. The 30 pages of articles are mostly
 1 WOMEN IN NORTH KOREA: IDEAL AND REALITY 13

about the heroines being recognized for their efforts to get through diffi-
culty and achieve their goals. So, then, we will now turn our outline of
this study as we look to examine North Korean policy by categorizing five
types of ideal womanhood—the hardworking woman, the woman revo-
lutionary, the professional woman, the good wife and wise mother, and
the woman of military support and volunteering.
First type is the hardworking woman. North Korea strongly encour-
ages women’s participation in society because women make up half of
the total population and can contribute to economic growth if actively
involved in the construction of the socialist state. Women of Joseon advo-
cates women who make remarkable achievements or are devoted to the
authorities’ core industries. The areas where these women mostly engage
are agriculture, mining, and silkworm cocoon production. In line with the
authorities’ core policy, the journal introduces examples of heroines who
had done extremely well in forest recovery, recovery from flood damage,
and support for construction sites. Men originally were responsible for
food supplies with the distribution system at work, but their capacity to
supply food reached its limit when the public distribution system collapsed
since the hardship and famine period (1995–1998).
The view spread that stay-at-home women should take responsibility
for supporting the family on behalf of the men who counted on an ineffi-
cient distribution system of the incompetent state. The journal advocates
that farming is the way to bring honor to the regime and addressing
food shortage is the way to win the fight against the enemy. It also main-
tains that solving food problems is what the former leaders wanted them
to do (2015, 10th: 49). The journal also calls for an increase in crop
production, citing women examples who are recognized for their efforts
to address food shortage through such methods as weed removal and
manure production. Notably, in spring, it introduces the hardworking
heroine who produces manure and takes it to the farm. For example, there
is a story about a former-track athlete Yoon Ok-sil who walked for 40 km
taking manure in the freezing winter and sweltering summer (2015, 2nd:
42–43). In autumn, the season of harvest, the journal runs articles about
crop harvest and threshing.
Those articles are there because in rural areas where threshing facili-
ties and equipment are often lacking, harvest and threshing are important
tasks to be done. It is necessary to accumulate the pile of grass manure
by cutting the grass on time and improve fertility of the soil to further
increase the grain production. The farmers as well as our women should
14 S. NAM ET AL.

keep in mind that production of manure helps raise productivity (2015,

8th: 31). Greenhouses for vegetables can be the best way to get through
food shortages during harsh winters (2014, 12th: 50). The North Korean
regime intends to grow vegetables in any season by building greenhouses
for vegetables and growing hay in Gangwon Province to increase live-
stock production. By actively promoting the activities of the female shock
brigade, the Committee of the Joseon Democratic Women Federation in
Sepo County produced a large amount of organic fertilizer every year
on the land of tens of jongbo (10 hectare). They also produced many
livestock feeds by closely planning fertilization and management of live-
stock base in Sepo County. The Committees of the Joseon Democratic
Women Federation in Pyunkang and Icheon County have been devoting
themselves to construction of a livestock base. (2016, 2nd: 45)
North Korea stresses the importance of coal and electric power produc-
tion to improve the economy and people’s lives. As socialism emphasizes
quantitative production, the regime cites the speed of Chollima (fine
horse), Mallima (best horse), and Masikryeong (speedy hard worker),
encouraging more coal to be extracted and used. Women of Joseon advo-
cates the hardworking heroines who strive in coal production in order to
solve the serious shortage of energy. This is seen as attempts to utilize
women workforces in coal production, which had originally been an area
completely dominated by men (2015, 2nd: 50).
More than this, women are mobilized for railway-building and water-
storage tank construction to support male miners. Electricity is the basic
driving force for today’s industry and expansion of electricity production
is the key to economic growth and people’s livelihood (2015, 2nd: 48).
Accordingly, women have jobs in which they visit power plants and supply
necessities to the construction site like padded clothes and rain clothes
(2015, 2nd: 51). North Korea designated March 2 as a tree planting day
like South Korea’s Arbor Day and conducts projects for forest protec-
tion. Tree nurseries are built, and tree planting is recommended in efforts
to protect forests (2012, 3rd: 27). The journal stresses that Kim Jung-
sook, wife of the former leader Kim Il-sung, also took the lead in keeping
forests green, and encouraged women to be involved in forest projects,
citing episodes of her life. In the journal, the North Korean authorities
induced women’s active efforts to recover damages from harmful insects
and forest fires (2016, 2nd: 31). Housing and street building are the core
project pursued by Kim Jong-un. In the journal, hardworking heroines at
construction sites help for construction workers. Although not directly
 1 WOMEN IN NORTH KOREA: IDEAL AND REALITY 15

offering support, women lift the moral of male construction workers in

the form of various ideology projects involving word-of-mouth and art
instigations (2016, 5th: 41).
Second type is the woman revolutionary. Types of the woman revolu-
tionary are mostly figuring of the past. This type of womanhood is divided
into anti-Japanese fighters and Korean War heroines, and Kim Jung-sook
(wife of former North Korean founder Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il’s
mother) and Gang Ban-seok (mother of Kim Il-sung). With stories of
those ordinary women who endeavor to fight against Japan, the journal
can instill socialist ideas and patriotism into the North Korean people.
By introducing the anti-Japanese struggles of Kim Jung-sook, the journal
aims to elevate the people’s loyalty toward the leader and strengthen justi-
fication of the “Paektu Bloodline” (lineal family of North Korea founder
Kim Il-sung) members. North Korea advocates Kim Jung-sook, mother
of Kim Jong-il, as the regime’s primary woman revolutionary. There are
three images envisioned in Kim Jung-sook. First, she has the anti-Japanese
fighter image. In the journal, she is described as a wise and brave heroine,
devoted to independence from Japan by involvement in various anti-
Japanese protests and organizing women’s units to assist military forces.
Skilled in arms, Kim can test arms, and with knowledge of military affairs,
she is able to give easy explanations about combat techniques:

To realize the great leader’s idea of building a modern tank mechaniza-

tion unit as soon as possible, Kim Jung-sook personally made uniforms for
the tank commanders and often went to the unit to help. She frequently
visited the training camps of the soldiers and told the soldiers about
the combat techniques of guerrilla and modern warfare in an easy-to-
understand manner. She demonstrated gunning and led them to be sharp
shooters who handle weapons professionally and shoot guns well. (2015,
2nd: 20)

She has the image of mother of the regime, depicted as a woman with
warmth who comforts bereaved families and takes care of the wounded
and other soldiers at the battlefield (2015, 2nd: 23). Her third image
is a wise intellectual who leads through turbulent times. After indepen-
dence, Kim helped the federation members go to school in efforts to
fight illiteracy. At the same time, Kim is depicted as a person of active-
ness and enthusiasm visiting women who are not allowed to go to school
due to their in-laws and husbands (2016, 4th: 23). She is also described
16 S. NAM ET AL.

as a woman who made a great contribution to gender equality and the

women’s movement. Kim called for gender equality, arguing that women
should join in social and political activities in order to exercise their equal
rights, just as men do. In Women of Joseon, despite being a woman, Kim
Jung-sook had abundant military information and a pioneering ability to
lead women during turbulent times, such as the Japanese occupation and
through the subsequent anti-Japanese protests.
On the surface, Kim’s calls for gender equality and women’s partic-
ipation in social and political activities seem ideal. In fact, it is unclear
whether Kim engaged in those acts, and even if she did, it does not
matter. It is merely the North Korean tactic to make the drama that it
wants with Kim starring in the main role. By showing that the wife of Kim
Il-sung, the woman at the highest position, engages in diverse activities,
the regime aims to instigate other ordinary women to join in on active
and dedicated social activities. Women’s involvement in social and polit-
ical activities means that women participate in diverse aspects to succeed
in completing the party’s projects. All in all, the call for gender equality is
translated into women’s involvement in social and political activities, and
this is the North Korean complex intention to instill revolutionary ideas
into women and mobilize women labor forces (2016, 4th: 25).
In Women of Joseon, women who lost their lives in the independence
movement, the Korean War, and the fight against the enemy are revo-
lutionary soldiers. Former North Korean leader, Kim Jong-il, praised
women for their efforts to instill their revolutionary and combat spirit
and their heroic struggle for the victory in the rear and forefront of
the battlefield. Some examples are Ahn Soon-hwa, Ko Jin-hee, and Cho
Ok-soon. The journal describes them as virtuous women revolution-
aries who performed exemplary revolutionary actions (2015, 1st: 26).
There are other revolutionary heroines noted in the journal, such as a
woman throwing herself onto an enemy’s tank with a grenade, or another
who spent years to save her hometown, and women who supplied food
and supplies to the battlefield. North Korea sheds light on women who
contributed to the anti-Japanese struggle and war and calls them “the
People’s Republic Heroines” with the regime’s unification prize (2015,
8th: 26). By consistently advocating women revolutionaries in the Korean
War and anti-Japanese protests, the North revives the history of inva-
sion and brutality by Japan, making its people feel victimized by the
enemy. It blames the United States and Japan as the main enemies estab-
lishing the warfare logic that North Korea is still vulnerable to attack from
 1 WOMEN IN NORTH KOREA: IDEAL AND REALITY 17

the United States and Japan, and it deploys a comprehensive strategy to

make the people believe that they can be protected by the regime from
foreign invasion and thus be united. In North Korea, the liberation of
women and gender equality has its roots in the equal involvement of
men and women in social and political activities. The North propagates
that women are one of the wagon wheels of the revolution. As women
make up half of the contributions to the revolution, the regime nurtures
professional women and induces their involvement in areas where only
men were dominant players. Women professions in the journal include
soldiers, scientists, athletes (coach), and so on.
North Korea calls scientific technology as the patriotic business that
can prop up the next generation of the nation. In his speech at the 4th
Conference of Cell Secretaries of the Workers Party of North Korea, Kim
Jong-un noted that the time we live in now is the time of scientific tech-
nology and a knowledge economy and that science is the key to building
a strong state and its future (2014, 2nd: 20). Thus, he encourages equal
involvement of men and women in scientific technology projects and
state policies. Women of Joseon introduces scientists and technicians in
various fields, such as Dr. Choi Seung-bok who completed research on
bio-pesticides (Pyeongyang Biotechnology Research Institute), researcher
Kim Jung-ae who was recognized for her medical research on stomach
disease treatments (Cheongjin Clinical Medicine Center), and Dr. Lee
Hyun-seul who realized plant automation is recognized as well (National
Science & Technology Commission). The journal advertises that the
regime offers various benefits for scientists who strive to promote the
science-first principle, and women scientists are treated as equally as their
male counterparts with residence and special stores provided. It also publi-
cizes that it was the North Korean leaders who nurtured those women as
science and engineering experts and made their research possible. The
women, in turn, all attribute their achievement to Kim Jong-un and his
forefathers. Its logic follows the idea that the leaders of North Korea
found scientific talents in women and fostered them as doctors.
North Korea deploys ‘sungun’ (military-first) policy, which prioritizes
the Korean People’s Army. Under the policy, the army plays a critical role
in the revolution. As the army had been exclusively for men, examples
of women soldiers who made heroic achievements are very appropriate
to support the regime’s logic for gender equality. The journal adver-
tises that its leader, Kim Jong-un, gives instruction on tactical maneuvers
for women pilots and additional guidance in firing weapons for women
18 S. NAM ET AL.

gunners. There is also in-depth coverage that women can perform as

much as men do, encouraging women to be a part of the army: The
respectable leader was satisfied with the flight training of female pilots
flying into the blue sky of the motherland and proud of them for flying
chase as well as a man and for landing at an unfamiliar airfield under
adverse weather conditions. He complimented female pilots for showing
off the spirit of Korean women and he called them good daughters of the
hero Joseon and heroines of training (2015, 9th: 17).
In Women of Joseon, athletes who were awarded prizes and won titles
are covered. Examples are track athlete Shin Keum-dan, gymnast Choi
Myung-sim, soccer players Kim Kyung-hwa and Hur Soon-hee, and
swimmer Kim Kook-hyang. The journal claims the East Asian Cup title
of the North Korean women soccer team revives the past victory and
glorifies women athletes: Shin Keum-dan was a turner at one of the local
factories and won 180 gold medals in domestic and international compe-
titions and renewed the world record 11 times. She contributed to North
Korea becoming a world record holder in the women’s 400 m and 800 m
running. She did what she needed to do as an athlete, but the great leader
presented her an award and pinned the badges on her chest. The leader
granted her with the title “distinguished athlete” in 1961 and the title of
“people’s athlete” in 1966 (2014, 2nd: 7).
The reason that North Korean athletes are highly appreciated is that
winning medals and competition is a way to enhance the national prestige
to the international community. Despite international opposition, North
Korea had pushed for total six nuclear tests in 2006, 2009, 2013, 2016,
and 2017 and found itself isolated from the outside world. International
competitions like the Olympics and World Cup are the only channels that
allow for the North Korea’s communication and involvement in interna-
tional affairs, offering the chance to prove itself to its people that North
Korea is a member of the international community. The regime praises
athletes for their achievements in international competitions and encour-
ages them with prizes and titles in addition to recognizing them as great
as scientists and soldiers. Notably, in international competition, women
players perform better than their male counterparts, so their cases are
often used to introduce heroines.
In South Korean society, a good wife and wise mother are also
the idealized traditional role for women. North Korea presents the far
extended image of the good wife and wise mother under the socialist
monolithic ideology system. First, a good wife and wise mother in North
 1 WOMEN IN NORTH KOREA: IDEAL AND REALITY 19

Korea are encouraged to induct many children into the armed forces.
North Korea is also faced with a low fertility rate due to a depressed
economy that has lasted since the North Korean famine in the mid-1990s,
so the regime tries to persuade women to give birth to many babies,
informing women that it is the job of women and an act of patriotism. In
the North, which holds to the ‘sungun’ (military-first) policy, the policy
to promote childbirth matters because more babies translate into more
military forces. Women who have many babies are awarded the title of
heroin and are given chances to have a discussion in the national competi-
tion for mothers. Moreover, North Korea uses various ways to encourage
and promote childbirth (2016, 8th: 43). North Korea glorifies the idea of
having more babies as an act of lofty patriotism and the job of the mother
under the ‘sungun’ policy. However, women who have more children lead
a more difficult life because they must juggle childcare, office work, and
house chores. Notably, they have to help their children study and socialize
while paying attention to their health if they want their children to work
for the army (2015, 6th: 45; 2016, 9th: 46):

There was an occasion to celebrate in a village in Gisan-ri, Pyeonggang

County last April. One of women’s union members Song, Gyum-sook gave
birth to her ninth child. The more the children grew up, the more work
she did. She had to take care of her children and lead them to study well.
She also had to raise livestock for their nutritional care. She did not have
much time to rest and sometimes she fell. But each time, she thought it is
patriotism and the job of the mother under the sungun policy. She decided
to give birth to more children and devoted all her intellect and effort to
raise them up stately and well. (2012, 9th: 44)

Through such propaganda, the regime encourages more childbirth.

The happiest and most honorable mother advocated by the regime is the
mother of a soldier, so the yardstick to evaluate the life of a woman is
not ultimately the woman herself, but the performance of her children
in the army. The family whose children are in the army is called “the
rear family” meaning that people who are not in the military support the
soldiers. That kind of family is respected and is encouraged to be devoted
to providing reinforcement as they raise their family (2012, 10th: 30).
Second, in North Korea the role of the mother is stressed more than that
of father in child-rearing and education. When it comes to providing chil-
dren with an education, only the role of the mother is emphasized with
20 S. NAM ET AL.

no consideration of the father’s role. Generally, both mother and father

share responsibilities for child-rearing and education, but in the North,
the first educator for a child is the mother, so their upright and sound
mindset, mental health, and cultural and moral character are highlighted
(2014, 1st: 12): In home education, the parents’ education is important,
and especially the roles of women and mothers are very important. The
person who children see for the first time in the world is the mother. With
a mother’s help, children learn everything they need, including walking,
talking, dressing, and eating. The first education of children has a great
influence on their growth and development. Therefore, mothers realize
that they should fulfill their responsibilities and roles (2016, 11th: 42).
North Korean mothers are required by the regime to mind the dress
code and hairstyles that affect their children’s decency and education, so
their responsibility and roles are always emphasized. Notably, the regime
intervenes in the mother’s speech style, attitude, and appearance, encour-
aging them to be very careful about these things in the name of children’s
education. The regime argues that it is inappropriate for women to go out
of their house wearing working clothes without wearing makeup. It main-
tains that the mother should always be neat, decent, and beautiful in the
eyes of their children to earn trust and respect from them. Through this,
we can learn that North Korean society advocates women as the ones who
nurture the regime’s future but tightens control of their personality and
freedom (2013, 11th: 12).
It is also emphasized that mothers should rear globally gifted children,
through updating the school curriculum. The specific gravity of educa-
tion has slightly shifted since 2012, in Kim Jong-un’s reign, reflecting a
global trend. Third, a North Korean wife should support and serve her
husband at home. An ideal wife in the North is someone with warmth and
generous understanding. North Korean society favors an understanding
and considerate woman rather than respecting the individual character of
woman, and it is the woman who first pleases her husband and lifts the
mood in the relationship with her husband. The journal argues that a
wife is charming when she mitigates her husband’s feelings of stress and
burden and helps lift up the mood in any situation. No matter who was in
the wrong, wives must obey their husbands in all things and understand
their husbands in a way to keep the romance alive. Moreover, the journal
writes that the role of women is not to reveal their feelings but to offer
support for their husbands and to help them do their duty as the proper
breadwinner (2012, 8th: 43).
 1 WOMEN IN NORTH KOREA: IDEAL AND REALITY 21

Fourth, a North Korean daughter-in-law should devote herself to

her parents-in-law in general. Daughters-in-law do everything for their
family-in-law, whether it is good or not, and serve their husbands and
raise children while taking care of their brothers-in-law and sisters-in-law.
It says that the daughter-in-law cannot compare with married daugh-
ters in terms of care and the burden of housework. This means that a
married daughter is no longer a member of her own family in North
Korea but focuses on married life in the home of the husband’s family.
North Korean women give birth to as many children as possible in an
act of patriotism and assume the role of nurturing those children for
the future. At the same time, they are required to serve husbands as a
wife and support the parents-in-law and family-in-law as a daughter-in-
law. However, North Korean society has not highly evaluated the efforts
and sacrifices that women make, and it only stresses the importance of the
role for women, rather than the individuals themselves. The regime just
encourages women not to fix the outdated practice of raising children
and supporting husbands but enter into society to be actively involved
in the construction of the new state. A stay-at home housewife is nega-
tively portrayed as “someone who does nothing at home,” and doing
house chores is also neglected as “a mere kitchen thing,” thus substan-
tially devaluing the role of women at home (2013, 1st: 11). The four
types of the good wife and wise mother model advocated by the North
Korean regime seriously distorts the traditional image of the good wife
and wise mother.
The fifth type of the heroine in the journal is the woman of military
support and volunteering. North Korean society presents two grounds to
spur women to participate in assisting troops and providing support to
the military. First, it educates women that the value of women’s lives lies
in devoting their life to their community and society, country and people,
and the ruling Workers’ Party and revolution. The society emphasizes
that the most honorable way of life is to dedicate oneself to society rather
than living for oneself and constantly encourages women to give support
to the military by instilling in them that volunteer work and sacrifice are
the fundamental duties to build a revolutionary society. Second, North
Korea portrays support for the military as the tradition of Joseon women.
In his memoir, Kim Il-sung wrote of women who supported troops in
many ways, for example, by taking risks to secure and provide valuable
supplies such as fabrics, shoes, and firearms in their contribution to mili-
tary victory. The North Korean authorities appeal to women to actively
22 S. NAM ET AL.

offer assistance to the people’s army, a proud tradition of the Joseon

women’s movement, in response to the international community that
seeks to stage a pre-emptive strike against North Korea (2016, 11th: 44).
North Korean society prioritizes better treatment for soldiers. Yet faced
with a limited budget, it seeks to obtain service from civilians and assigns
the supportive roles to women. The supplies vary from crops to livestock
to everyday essentials to side-dish foods to military uniforms. Women’s
volunteer work for wounded soldiers and war veterans is often taken
for granted. News reports highlight women who sacrifice their lives by
marrying war veterans and becoming their wives. North Korean women
take care of war veterans on their birthdays and public holidays, as well as
their families. The journal depicts in its articles heroines who take active
involvement in the private aspects of the lives of war veterans, such their
food preference, hobbies, and financial situation:

Ryu Soon-ok visited the injured soldier’s house and checked his hobbies,
tastes, and even household as though she were his mother. Since then she
visited his house on national holidays and birthdays, as well as on ordinary
days and checked his health condition and helped him not to have any
difficulties and discomforts. (2012, 5th: 47)

On January 1, 2015, the Chairman, Kim Jong-un, visited an orphanage

in Pyongyang and instructed the JDWF to take charge in assisting
daycare centers and kindergartens. Following his instructions, a volun-
teer program for preschoolers emerged. Through volunteering for
preschoolers, North Korean society intends to demonstrate the chair-
man’s focus and love for younger and future generations. Volunteering for
preschoolers also falls on women and members of the JDWF. This volun-
teer activity consists of various supports such as cooking special treats for
little children and giving supplies needed for nurturing children such as
underwear, toys and daily essentials, or sewing clothes (2015, 11th: 41):

It was not easy to get clothing to be worn by many children, not even
one or two. But she was enthusiastic about the leader’s love for the future
generation and prepared warm and cozy clothing. Hong Jung-sook and
other women’s union members who operated the sewing machine day and
night put smiles on their faces imagining children who will receive the
clothes and will be happy with the new clothing. (2015, 9th: 29)
 1 WOMEN IN NORTH KOREA: IDEAL AND REALITY 23

North Korean women do busy lives of juggling their schedules among

family, work, and volunteering. North Korean society leverages patriotism
to spur women on to have many babies, while it capitalizes on gender
equality to employ women’s labor. At the same time, the society propa-
gandizes the true virtue of life in demanding that they volunteer and
sacrifice for the provision of military supplies and aid war veterans and
wounded soldiers as well as children.

1.2.5 Implicit Intention and Evaluation of Mimicking Heroine

Policy
The JDWF’s periodical is a tool for manipulating symbols to enforce
policies by identifying, creating, and promoting the heroine intensely to
propel all women into mimicking heroic actions. Their propaganda has
an aspect of a political campaign, with its presentation of a model of a
sort of ‘super mom’ who dedicates herself to society in many fields and
sends a message that women are capable of leaving behind their passive
awareness in traditional patriarchy and contributing to national projects
in a manner equal to that of men. The five types of the heroines carry the
following policy goals.
During the Joseon Dynasty era (1392–1910), when traditional Confu-
cianism reigned, the prevailing perspective was that men and women
needed to be segregated as it dictated that boys and girls must not be
present in same space from the age of seven. The dominant thinking was
that, in accordance with the mentality that preferred men over women,
men and women possess different capacities and roles. Under the colonial
rule, Japan never felt the necessity to execute a policy to correct gender
discrimination on the Korean Peninsula, thus resulting in no big change
in social awareness. The Japanese authorities deemed that the culture
of their colonial subjects that called for women’s obedience was not a
negative element in their colonial rule. In a sense that women’s non-
resistant obedience effectively controlled one pillar of resistance against
colonial governance, it can be said that Japan ironically fueled gender
discrimination.
Kim Il-sung believed that eliminating gender inequality was vital to
fully accomplishing his revolution in the process of nation building. He
concluded that women’s participation would be effective in removing the
psychological barrier of men who were passive in fulfilling the revolution.
He recognized that shifting away from the thinking that distinguishes jobs
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 The “Controller” of the train, an official in plain clothes, whose
exact duties I was not able to determine, except that he was able to
turn the second-class passenger out of our carriage, spent a day and
a night with us. He and the engineer talked without ceasing of the
meetings of the Zemstva all over the country; of the discontent of the
public servants and of the imminence of a strike. They told me there
would be a big railway strike, but I did not pay much attention to
this, nor did I in the least realise the importance of what they were
discussing. In one of the second-class carriages I made friends with
two young officers who were going out to the war as volunteers, and
two ladies, one the wife of an officer already out there, and the other
a hospital nurse. With them also was the son of the officer’s wife, a
student from Odessa, who told me many interesting things. He
described to me in great detail the mutiny of the Black Sea Fleet, and
he prophesied, if not a revolution, at least a great change in Russia in
the immediate future. One of the carriages of the train was barred,
and in it sat a political prisoner, a schoolmaster from Irkutsk. Some
of my friends went to speak to him, but they came back in
melancholy and disappointment, since they said this prisoner was
hissing hatred and rage through the bars in an undignified and
painful manner.
Soon after we left Baikal a young man joined us who said he was
employed in a firm at Chita. He had brought with him some flowers
from Irkutsk. These he carried in a large basket full of wet sand. They
were a kind of pathetic stock but not “in fragrant blow”; poor, feeble,
starved and rather dirty flowers they were. But in Transbaikalia
flowers were rare, and he had paid 18 roubles, he said (£1 8s.), for
this nosegay, and he was bringing them to Chita as a gift to the girl to
whom he was engaged to be married. He looked after these flowers
with the utmost care; the basket was put in my berth and, as it was
full of water, a constant stream trickled down from it and made a
small pond on the floor of the carriage.

August 20th. Later.

We are nearing Chita; the husband of the lady to whom I gave my

place has arrived to meet her and take her home. He is an engineer.
They are deeply engaged in discussing local politics. The husband
talks of a coming strike, and tells me that if I wish to see political
meetings I had better stay in Chita. There are meetings every
evening; some of them are dispersed by the police. I now realise the
importance of flowers in this country; it is “a land of sand and ruin
and gold.” The young clerk has produced two perforated
bouquetholders (is there such a word?) and has carefully placed the
flowers in them, with a sigh of relief. They have not quite faded,
although they droop sadly. At Chita the lady and her husband get
out. The engineer also. I am now alone in my carriage. Beyond Chita
the country is mountainous and fledged with fir-trees.

August 21st.

The hilly country has ceased and we have once more reached the
flat plains. This morning the guard brought a man into my carriage
and asked me if I minded his sitting there. I said I did not mind. I
offered him some tea. The man made no answer, and looked at me
with a vacant stare. Then the guard laid him down at full length, and
said, “This man is the assistant station-master at Manchuria station.
He is drunk, but you need not be alarmed; he will be quite quiet.” He
was quiet; at Manchuria station he woke up from his stupor
automatically, as though from frequent habit.

August 22nd.

We arrived at Manchuria station last night. The chaos that always

reigns there is terrific. I had the utmost difficulty in obtaining
permission to continue my journey. The officials said I needed an
extra paper, besides those I had with me, from the Chief of the Staff
in Kharbin. The initial difficulty was to get one’s ticket, as the crowd
was dense and long. What quantities of people seem to be drawn to
Manchuria, like filings to a magnet! An officer got me my ticket, and
just when I had utterly despaired of being able to travel further, the
gendarme brought me my permission to proceed. Then came the
struggle for a place in a third-class carriage. This was successfully got
through. I obtained an upper berth across the window. The
compartment is crammed with people.

August 23rd.
 We are travelling through the hills of northern Manchuria. News
has arrived of the summoning of a new Duma. Now people say there
will not be peace, and the war will become a national war because it
will have the consent of the people. Others contest this; there are hot
discussions. I have moved into a second-class carriage in which there
is a photographer and a captain. I had my fortune told with cards by
a lady in the train. She said I should soon meet a lot of friends and
experience a change of fortune for the better.

August 28th.

We arrived at Kharbin the day before yesterday. The town seems to

have got much bigger than when I left it last year. The climate has
not improved, nor have the prices at the hotel diminished. I have
already met some old friends of last year at the bank and at the staff.
There is a new restaurant opposite the bank, where a band plays the
overture to “William Tell” without ceasing. Kharbin is empty. It
appears that Linievitch does not allow officers to come here except
on pressing errands. I dislike Kharbin more than any place I have
ever seen in the world. The one topic is, of course, the peace
negotiations. The matter is hotly discussed; some are in favour of
peace, others vehemently against it. The news is contradictory. I have
asked for leave to go to the front. I shall have to wait some days
before I receive it.

August 31st.

I am laid up in bed, and Mr. Ostrovski of the Russo-Chinese bank

has just been to see me. He has come from the staff, where they told
him that news had been received from St. Petersburg that there
would not be peace. Orders had come to dispatch everything
available to the front with all possible speed and to get ready for an
offensive movement.

September 1st.

Peace has been officially announced. Among the officers I have

seen, opinions vary, but the men are delighted. They are tearing the
telegrams from each other.
 September 7th.

I arrived at Gonchuling yesterday. Gonchuling is now what

Mukden used to be before the battle of Mukden was fought. It
consists of dozens and dozens of small grey brick houses, with slate
roofs, on one side of the line, and on the other side of the line is a
small Chinese town. The Military Attachés are here in their car. I am
living with the Press Censors. People talk about peace as if it was not
yet a fact. An officer, whose wife I met in the train coming out, has
been sent to fortify positions. Kouropatkin’s army is said to have
received orders to advance. People express doubts as to whether the
peace will be ratified, and there is talk of a revolution in Japan.
I have the intention of joining the 2nd Transbaikal Cossack
battery, with which I lived last year. I have telegraphed to them to
send horses to meet me at Godziadan, the Head Quarters of the Staff.

September 10th.

I have arrived at Godziadan. In the station is the train of the

Commander-in-Chief. There is also a correspondents’ car, where I
have been put up and hospitably entertained by Boris Nikolaievitch
Demchinsky, correspondent of a Russian newspaper. The news has
come of the first pour-parlers which are to take place between the
Russian and Japanese Commanders-in-Chief.
 CHAPTER II
JEN-TZEN-TUNG

September 13th.

I arrived at the quarters of the battery this morning. It is quartered in

a village near the large Chinese town of Jen-tzen-tung on the
Mongolian frontier. I started from Godziadan at eight o’clock in the
morning on the 11th, when I found two Cossacks waiting for me, with
a third pony for me to ride, saddled with my own English saddle,
which I had left behind me last year. As we started one of the
Cossacks said: “You must be careful with that pony, he throws
himself.” I wondered what this meant; whether the pony ran away, or
bit, or kicked, or stumbled, or bucked, or fell, my experience of
Chinese ponies being that they do all these things. I was not long in
finding out; it meant that the pony took a sort of dive forward every
now and then, tearing the skin off one’s fingers in the effort to hold it
up.
After we had ridden for about two hours, one of the Cossacks
asked the other if he knew the way. The other answered that he did
not. The first one told him he was a fool. “But,” I interrupted, “as you
have just come from Jen-tzen-tung, surely you know the way back.”
“Oh!” they answered, “we came by quite a different way along the
lines. But, nichevo, it doesn’t matter. We shall get there somehow.”
We stopped for luncheon at an encampment of the Red Cross. I was
entertained by the doctors and the hospital nurses. They expressed
the most bitter and violently revolutionary sentiments. After
luncheon we went on, asking the way of the Chinese in each village,
our destination for the evening being the large town of Oushitai. At
every village we asked, the Chinese answered by telling us how many
lis (a li is 1⅓ of a mile) Oushitai was distant, and the accuracy with
which they determined the distance was, as far as I could judge,
amazing. We arrived at Oushitai at moonrise. We went into a yard
where there was tea, and straw to lie on, and provisions, but the
Cossacks refused to stay there because there were “soldiers” there.
The Cossacks, being Cossacks and not “soldiers,” often consider it
beneath their dignity to mix with soldiers. So we had to find another
yard, where we drank tea and slept until dawn the next morning,
when we started once more. We halted at midday in a small Chinese
village for our midday meal. It was a small, rather tumble-down
village, with a large clump of trees near it. A Chinaman came out of a
house, and seeing the red correspondent’s badge on my arm, asked
me if I was a doctor. To save the bother of explanation I said I was a
doctor. Then he conveyed the information in pidgin-Russian that his
son was ill, and requested me to cure him. I went into the house and
he showed me a brown and naked infant with a fat stomach. I made
him put out his tongue. It was white. I asked what he had been eating
lately. The Chinaman said raw Indian corn. I prescribed cessation of
diet and complete repose. The Chinaman appeared to me to be much
satisfied, and asked me if I would like to hear a concert. I said very
much. Then he bade me sit down on the khan—the natural divan of
every Chinese house—and to look (“smotrì, smotrì” he said).
Presently another Chinaman came into the room and, taking from
the wall a large and twisted clarion (like the wreathed horn old
Triton blew), he blew on it one deafening blast and hung it up on the
wall again. There was a short pause, I waited in expectation, and the
Chinaman turned to me and said: “The concert is now over.”
I then went to have luncheon with the Cossacks under the trees.
The luncheon consisted of hard rusks (hard as bricks), made of black
bread, swimming in an earthen bowl of boiling water on the top of
which tea was sprinkled. When we had finished luncheon, and just as
we were about to resume our journey, the Chinaman in whose house
I had been entertained rushed up to me and said: “In your country,
when you go to a concert, do you not pay for it?” The concert was
paid for and then we started once more to ride along the
mountainous roads, a flat green country, with few trees, and great
pools of water caused by recent rain, through which we had to wade
and sometimes to swim. Towards the afternoon the aspect of the
country changed; we reached grassy and flowery steppes. It was the
beginning of the Mongolian country. We met Mongols sitting
sideways on their ponies, and dressed in coats of many colours. I
have never felt quite so tired in my life as while that interminable
afternoon wore on. The distance from Godziadan to Jen-tzen-tung is
eighty miles, and when the sun set, and the Cossacks announced that
after arriving at Jen-tzen-tung we should have to ride yet two miles
further to find the battery, I inwardly resolved that no force on earth
should make me ride another inch that night. We arrived at Jen-
tzen-tung at eight o’clock in the evening. There I found my old friend
Kizlitzki, of the battery, who, as usual, was living by himself in
Chinese quarters of immaculate cleanliness. His servant being the
former cook of the battery who used every day to make “Boeuf
Stroganoff,” Kizlitzki gave me an excellent dinner and a most
comfortable bed. The next morning I rode to the village, two miles
distant, where the battery was quartered, and here I found all my old
friends: Glinka, the doctor, Hliebnikoff, and others.
The house is a regular Chinese house, or series of one-storeyed
houses forming a quadrangle, in which horses, donkeys, and hens
disport themselves. We occupy one side of the house. Opposite us the
owner lives. In the evening one hears music from the other side. I
went to see what it was; a Chinaman lying on his back plays on a one-
stringed lute, “und singt ein Lied dabei, das hat eine wundersame
gewaltige Melodei.” Something like this:—

The first question everybody asked me was whether peace had

been declared or not. There has been some fighting here at the
outposts since peace was declared.

September 15th.

This village is exceedingly picturesque. It lies in a clump of willow-

trees and hard by there is a large wood which stretches down to a
broad and brown river. Next to our quarters there is a small house
where an old Chinaman is preparing three young students for their
examination in Pekin. One of these Chinamen came this morning
and complained that their house had been ruined by the Cossacks.
We went to inspect the disaster. It turned out that one of the
Cossacks had put his finger through one of the paper windows of the
house, making thereby a small hole in it. The old teacher is quite
charming. He recited poetry to us. When the Chinese recite poetry
they half sing it. I had lately read a translation of a Chinese poem by
Li-Tai-Po, which in the translation runs thus:—
“You ask me what my soul does away in the sky;
I inwardly smile but I cannot make answer;
Like the peach blossom carried off by the stream,
I soar away to a world unknown to you.”

By means of a small piece of wood, a flower, and some water I

made the Chinaman understand what poem I was alluding to, and he
recited it for us. The Chinese asked me to tell them their fortunes by
their hands. I said to one of them, at random, that I saw great riches
in his hand, thinking it would please him. The Chinaman said
nothing, but later, when this Chinaman, who was a visitor, had gone,
the others said to me: “You spoke true words. That man is a
‘Koupeza’ (pidgin-Russian for merchant) and he is enormously rich.”
These Chinamen take an acute interest in the result of the peace
negotiations, and wish to be informed as to all sorts of details of
which we are ignorant. The impression among the officers here is
that it is a very good thing that peace has been concluded. “We ought
to thank Heaven that our men have not been beaten again,” one of
them said, and he added: “It is silly to say that the higher authorities
are the only guilty ones; we are all equally guilty.”

September 16th.

We spend the time riding, reading, bathing, sleeping, and playing

patiences.
Jen-tzen-tung is a large and most picturesque town. A constant
stream of Mongols flows in and out of it. They wear the most
picturesque clothes, silks and velvets of deep orange and luminous
sea-green, glowing like jewels. We ride into the town to buy
provisions, fish mostly. The wines sold at the shops are all sham and
horribly nasty. At the corner of one of the streets there is a
professional wizard, dressed in black silk embroidered with silver
moons, and wearing the conical cap that wizards always do wear. You
ask a question, pay a small sum and shake coins out of a cup three
times, and according as the coins make an odd or even figure, the
wizard writes down a sign on a piece of paper, and then he tells you
the answer to your question. The Chinese consult him before striking
a bargain or setting out on a journey. I asked him whether I should
get back all right? He answered that I could go home either by the
East or the West, and that the West would be better, though I should
meet with obstacles.
He refused to prophesy for more than a hundred days ahead.
In the evening, after dinner, we discussed politics and the Duma
(that is to say the Duma as originally planned by the decree of August
6th). The doctor said that unless there were to be a constitution in
Russia, he would emigrate abroad, as he did not choose that his
children should be brought up in a country which was politically
inferior to Turkey. He is hopeful about the Duma; he says Witte will
be a national hero; and that a constitution is a foregone conclusion.
Somebody said the peasants were hopeless. He hotly contested this,
and said there was far more political sense among the peasants than
among the rest of the population. He has had great experience of the
peasants.

September 19th.

I had a long talk with Kizlitzki this afternoon. He is like a round

peg in a square hole in this army. Strict discipline and impeccable
order seem to him the first essentials of military life. The others don’t
understand this, although they are conscientious; but they like doing
things in their own way, which is a happy-go-lucky way, and they
think Kizlitzki is rather mad. Kizlitzki told me that at the battle of Ta-
shichiae, where he was in command of the battery, when he had
made all the necessary arrangements, placed his guns, &c., he
received orders to go and speak to a general; before he went, he
warned his subordinates to leave everything as it was. When he came
back he found that the battery, owing to the fancy of one of the
subordinates, had been moved two miles from where he had placed
it. So he had to fetch it back and arrange everything over again. The
result was that it did not open fire until two in the afternoon, a fact
which I had noticed at the time, although I was not with the battery
then. He said he had never made such an effort of self-control as not
to lose his temper when he saw what had been done. In the French or
German, and I trust also in our army, Kizlitzki’s methods would be
taken as a matter of course. Here they are considered to be an
unnecessary pose. On the other hand he is not in the least a
formalist, a lover of red-tape, or a pedant; he merely considers
elementary discipline to be necessary.
I had tea with a Chinese Mandarin. I do not know which was the
more exquisite, his tea or his manners. In the evening we discussed
writers of books. Hliebnikoff said he knew who was the greatest
writer in the world, and when some one else asked who, he answered
Dostoievski of course. The doctor vehemently disagreed with this.
Hliebnikoff went out of the room in disgust. It is astonishing what a
quantity of English novels these people have read in translations:
Mrs. Humphry Ward, Rider Haggard, Stevenson, Kipling, Conan
Doyle, Mark Twain, Jerome K. Jerome. The doctor admires Jerome
enormously. I think there is a human element in him which
especially appeals to Russians.

September 21st.

A fine, hot, and glorious September day. The evening was one of
those things that linger in one’s mind like music. The sky was a very
faint mauve, something between mauve and pink, like a hydrangea,
or as Dante says:—
“Men che di rose e più che di viole
Colore aprendo,”

and, hanging over the delicate willow-trees, silvery in the half-light

and faintly rustling, a large and misty moon—a moon made of
ghostly fire. The days pass in pleasant monotony; visitors come from
other divisions; but we go to bed about nine in the evening and get
up very early. It is a delicious life. We often visit the Chinese
professor in his peripatetic school. One of the students asked me
whether in my country “you write and a big captain comes to look-
see, and if all was not well, beats you.” I said that practically this was
the procedure of our competitive examinations.

September 27th.

Autumn has come and it is too cold now for the men to be
encamped here out of doors, so we have moved into quarters in the
town.

October 1st.

I left for Gunchuling, en route for Kharbin, with Hliebnikoff and

another, and bade goodbye to the friends who had so hospitably
entertained me. (Two of them I was never to see again, for they died
shortly after I left, one of typhoid and one of dysentery.) We arrived
at Oushitai at five in the evening. The country is said to be infested
by Hung-Hutzes, and some men were wounded by them yesterday in
the environs of this place. At Jen-tzen-tung I met a merchant, whom
I had known at Liaoyang, who had been caught by the Hung-Hutzes,
but—
“As no one present seemed to know
His use or name, they let him go.”

Jen-tzen-tung was on the extreme right flank of the Russian army.

The army therefore extended eighty miles from the extreme right
flank to the centre, and again another eighty miles from the centre to
the extreme left flank. Oushitai was connected with Gunchuling by a
kind of tram-railway drawn by horses.

October 6th.

In this tram we travelled to Gunchuling, and thence I proceeded to

Kharbin by train.
 CHAPTER III
THE STRIKE AND THE MANIFESTO OF
OCTOBER (30TH) 17TH

Moscow, November 3rd.

My return journey from Kharbin to Moscow was entirely uneventful

until we arrived at Samara. At Irkutsk I had got a place in the Trans-
Siberian express, which was crowded with all sorts and conditions of
men: officers, merchants, three Germans, three Americans who had
returned from working a mine in Siberia, a Polish student, and some
ladies.
The first inkling that I received of the fact that a revolution was
going on in Russia came to me in the following manner. We had
crossed the Urals and had only been travelling thirteen days. We had
arrived at Samara, when the attendant, who looked after the first-
class carriage, came into my compartment and heaved a deep sigh. I
asked him what was the matter. “We shan’t get further than Toula,”
he said. “Why?” I asked. “Because of the unpleasantnesses”
(niepriyat nosti). I asked, “What unpleasantnesses?” “There is a
mutiny,” he said, “on the line.” We passed the big station of Sisran
and arrived at the small town of Kouznetsk. There we were informed
that the train could not go any further because of the strike. Nobody
realised the extent of the strike, and we expected to go on in a few
hours. By the evening the passengers began to show some signs of
restlessness. Most of them telegraphed to various authorities. A
petition was telegraphed to the Minister of Ways and
Communications, saying that an express train full of passengers,
overtired by a long and fatiguing journey, was waiting at Kouznetsk,
and asking him to be so good as to arrange for them to proceed
further. There was no answer to this telegram. The next day a sense
of resignation seemed to come over the company. Although every
evening, towards dinner-time, one heard innumerable complaints
such as “only in Russia could such a bezobrazie (literally an ugliness,
i.e., a disgraceful thing) happen,” and one passenger suggested that
Prince Kilkoff’s portrait, which was hung in the dining-car, should be
turned face to the wall. The Polish student, who had accompanied
the Americans and made music for them, playing by ear any tune
they whistled to him, and consequently a great many tunes from the
Gaiety repertoire, played the piano with exaggerated facility and
endless fioriture and runs. I asked an American mechanic who was
with the mining managers whether he liked the music. He said he
would like it if the “damned hell” were knocked out of it, which was
exactly my feeling. But on the second day after our arrival my
American friends left by road for Samara, to proceed thence by water
to St. Petersburg. The passengers spent the time in exploring the
town, which was somnolent and melancholy in the extreme. Half of it
was a typical Russian village built on a hill, a mass of brown huts; the
other half, on the plain, was like a village in any country. The idle
guards and railway officials sat on the steps of the station-room
whistling. Two more trains arrived: a sanitary train and an ordinary
slow passenger train.
The passengers from these trains wandered about the platform,
mixing with the idlers from the town population. A crowd of
peasants and travellers, engineers, and Red Cross attendants,
soldiers, and merchants sauntered up and down in loose shirts and
big boots, munching sunflower seeds and spitting out the husks till
the platform was thick with refuse. A doctor who was in our train,
and who was half a German, with an official training and an
orthodox official mind, talked to the railway servants like a father. It
was very wrong to strike, he said. They should have put down their
grievances on paper and had them forwarded by the proper
channels. The officials said that that would be waste of ink and
caligraphy. “I wonder they don’t kill him,” said my travelling
companion, and I agreed with him. Each passenger was given a
rouble a day to buy food. The third-class passengers were given
checks, in return for which they could receive meals. However, they
deprecated the idea, and said that they wanted the amount in beer.
They received it. Then they looted the refreshment room, broke the
windows, and took away the food. This put an end to the check
system. The feeling among the first-class passengers deepened.
Something ought to be done, was the general verdict; but nobody
quite knew what. They felt that the train ought to be placed in a
position of safety. The situation on the evening of the second day
began to resemble that described in Maupassant’s masterpiece,
“Boule de Suif.” Nothing, however, could be done except to explore
the town of Kouznetsk. It was warm autumn weather. The roads were
soft and muddy, and there was a smell of rotting leaves in the air. It
was damp and grey, with gleams of pitiful weak sunshine. In the
middle of the town was a large market-place where a brisk trade in
geese was carried on. One man whom I watched failed to sell his
geese during the day, and while driving them home at night talked to
them as if they had been dogs, saying, “Cheer up, we shall soon be
home.” A party of convicts who belonged to the passenger train were
working hard by the station, and implored the passing tribute of a
sigh and a cigarette. Both were freely given. Convicts in Russia are
always alluded to as “unfortunates.” I met them near the station and
they at once said, “Give the unfortunates something.” In the evening,
in one of the third-class carriages, a party of Little Russians,
assistants in the Red Cross, sang songs in parts—melancholy,
beautiful songs, with a strange trotting rhythm and no end and no
beginning; and opposite their carriage on the platform a small crowd
of moujiks gathered together and listened, saying that the men sang
with cunning (lovko paiout).
On the morning of the fourth day after we had arrived the
impatience of the passengers increased to fever pitch. A colonel who
was with us, and who knew how to use the telegraph, communicated
with Piensa, the next big station. For although the telegraph clerks
were on strike they remained in the office conversing with their
friends on the wire all over Russia. The strikers were most affable.
They said they had not the slightest objection to the express
proceeding on its journey, that they would neither boycott nor beat
anybody who took us, and that if we could find a friend to drive the
engine, well and good. We did. We found a friend, an amateur
engine-driver, and an amateur engine, and on the 28th of October we
started for Piensa. We broke down on the way. The engine-driver was
supported by public contributions. The moment the engine stopped
work all the passengers volunteered advice as to how it should be
mended, one man producing a piece of string for the purpose.
However, another stray engine was found, and we arrived at last at
Piensa. There I saw mentioned in the telegrams the words “rights of
speech and assembly,” and I knew that the strike was a revolution. At
Piensa the rage of the military—who had had their return journey
from the Far East delayed—against the strikers was indescribable.
They were lurching about the station in a state of inebriate frenzy,
using language about strikes and strikers which is not fit to repeat.
One of them asked me if I was a striker. We stopped at Piensa for the
night. We started again the next morning for Moscow, but the train
came to a dead stop at two o’clock the next morning at Riansk, and
when I woke up the first-class attendant came, with many deep sighs,
and said that we should go no further until the unpleasantnesses
were at an end. But an hour later news came that we could go to
Riazan in another train, which we did. Riazan station, when we
arrived, was guarded by soldiers. A train was ready to start for
Moscow, but the scuffle for places in it was terrific. I found a place in
a third-class carriage. Opposite me was an old man with a grey
beard. He attracted my attention by the extraordinary courtesy with
which he prevented a woman, with many bundles, from being turned
out of the train by another moujik. I asked him where he came from.
“Eighty versts from the other side of Irkutsk,” he said. “I was sent
there, and I am returning home now after thirteen years at the
Government’s expense. I was a convict.” “What were you sent there
for?” I asked. “Murder!” he answered very gently. The other
passengers asked him to tell his story. “It’s a long story,” he said.
“Tell!” shouted the other passengers. His story briefly was this: He
had got drunk, set fire to a barn, and when the owner interfered he
had killed him. He had served two years’ hard labour and eleven
years’ banishment. He was a gentle, humble creature, with a very
mild expression, like an apostle in disguise. He had no money, and
lived on what other passengers gave him. I gave him a cigarette. He
smoked a quarter of it and said he would keep the rest for the
journey, as he had still got five hundred versts to travel. We arrived
at Moscow at eleven o’clock in the evening and found the town in
darkness, save for the glimmer of oil lamps. The next morning we
woke up to find that Russia had been given a Magna Charta; that the
railway and other officials had obtained the same concessions from
the Government as the Barons had won from King John seven
hundred years ago.
 Moscow, October 30th (Old Style, October 17th).
The first thing which brought home to me that Russia had been
granted the promise of a Constitution was this. I went to the big
Russian baths. Somebody came in and asked for some soap, upon
which the barber’s assistant, aged about ten, said with the air of a
Hampden, “Give the ‘citizen’ some soap” (Daite grajdaninon mwilo).
Coming out of the baths I found the streets decorated with flags, and
everybody in a state of frantic and effervescing enthusiasm. I went to
one of the big restaurants. There old men were embracing each other
and drinking the first glass of vodka to free Russia. After luncheon I
went out into the Theatre square. There is a fountain in it, which
forms an excellent public platform. An orator mounted it and
addressed the crowd. He began to read the Emperor’s Manifesto.
Then he said: “We are all too much used to the rascality of the
Autocracy to believe this; away with the Autocracy!” The crowd,
infuriated—they were evidently expecting an enthusiastic eulogy—
cried: “Away with you!” But instead of attacking the speaker who had
aroused their indignation they ran away from him! It was a curious
sight. The spectators on the pavement were seized with panic and
ran too. The orator, seeing his speech had missed fire, changed its
tone and said: “You have misunderstood me.” But what he had said
was perfectly clear. This speaker was an ordinary Hyde Park orator,
and not to be confused with the University professors who
afterwards spoke from the same platform. Later in the afternoon a
procession of students arrived opposite my hotel with red flags, and
collected outside the Governor-General’s house. He appeared on the
balcony and made a speech, in which he said that now there were no
police he hoped that they would be able to keep order themselves. He
asked them also to replace the red flag which was hanging on the
lamp-post opposite the palace by the national flag. One little student
climbed like a monkey up the lamp-post and hung a national flag
there, but did not remove the red flag. Then the Governor asked
them to sing the National Anthem, which they did; and as they went
away they sang the Marseillaise.
“On peut très bien jouer ces deux airs à la fois
Et cela fait un air qui fait sauter les rois.”
 At one moment a Cossack arrived, but an official came out of the
house and told him he was not needed, upon which he went away
amidst the jeers, cheers, hoots, and whistling of the crowd. The day
passed off quietly on the whole, the only untoward incidents being
the death of a woman and the wounding of a student and a workman
while trying to rescue a student from the prisoners’ van. A veterinary
surgeon called Bauman was also shot on this day.
To-day for the first time I heard the phrase “Black Gang” used. I
was standing on the doorstep of the Hôtel de France, when a woman
rushed frantically up and said the “Black Gang” were coming. A
student, belonging to a very good family, who was standing there,
also explained that the “Black Gang” consisted of roughs who
supported the autocratic cause. His hand, which was bandaged, had
been severely hurt while he was in the act of taking off his hat that
day, by a Cossack who had beat it with a whip, thinking he was about
to make a disturbance. He came up to my room and from the hotel
window we had a good view of the crowd which proceeded to—
“attaquer la Marseillaise en la
Sur les cuivres, pendant que la flûte soupire
En mi bèmol: Veillons au salut de l’Empire.”

Moscow, November 7th.

I went to see Maxim Gorki’s new play at the Artistic Theatre of

Moscow, “The Children of the Sun.” It was the second night that it
had been performed. M. Stanislavoshi, one of the chief actors of the
troupe and the stage manager, gave me his place. The theatre was
crammed. There is a scene in the play, where a doctor, living in a
Russian village, and devoting his life to the welfare of the peasants, is
suspected of having caused an outbreak of cholera. The infuriated
peasants pursue the doctor and bash some one on the head. On the
first night this scene had reduced a part of the audience to hysterics.
It was too “actual.” People said we see enough of our friends killed in
the streets without going to the play for such a sight. On the second
night it was said that the offensive scene had been suppressed. I did
not quite understand what had been eliminated. As I saw the scene it
was played as follows. A roar is heard as of an angry crowd. Then the
doctor runs into a house and hides. The master of the house protests;
a peasant flies at his throat and half strangles him until he is beaten
on the head by another peasant who belongs to the house. The play is
full of interesting moments, and was played with the finished
perfection which makes this theatre famous and unique. But M.
Gorki has not M. Tchekoff’s talent of representing on the stage the
uneventful passage of time, the succession of the seemingly
insignificant incidents of people’s everyday lives, chosen with such
skill, depicted with such an instinct for mood and atmosphere that
the result is enthrallingly interesting. M. Gorki’s plays have the faults
and qualities of his stories. They are unequal, but contain moments
of poignant interest and vividness. I do not think, however, that his
gifts are pre-eminently suited for the stage.
 CHAPTER IV
MOSCOW AFTER THE MANIFESTO

Wednesday, October 1st.

At dinner at the Métropole Restaurant a strange scene occurred. At

the end of dinner the band played the Marseillaise, and after it the
National Anthem. Everybody stood up except one mild-looking man
with spectacles, who went on calmly eating his dinner, upon which a
man who was sitting at the other end of the room, and was rather
drunk, rushed up to him and began to pull him about and drag him
to his feet. He made a display of passive resistance, which proved
effectual, and when he had finished his dinner he went away.

Thursday, November 2nd.

The outward aspect of the town during these days is strange.

Moscow seems like a city which has been undergoing a siege. Many
of the shops have got great wooden shutters. Some of the doors have
a large red cross on them. The distress, I am told, during the strike
was terrible. There was no light, no gas, no water, all the shops were
shut; provisions and wood were scarce. This afternoon I went to see
Bauman’s funeral procession, which I witnessed from many parts of
the town. It was one of the most impressive sights I have ever seen. A
hundred thousand men took part in it. The whole of the
“Intelligenzia” (the professional and middle class) was in the streets
or at the windows. The windows and balconies were crowded with
people. The order was perfect. There was not a hitch nor a scuffle.
The men walking in the procession consisted of students, doctors,
workmen, people in various kinds of uniform. There were
ambulances, with doctors dressed in white in them, in case there
should be casualties. The men bore great red banners and the coffin
was covered with a scarlet pall. As they marched they sang in a low
chant the “Marseillaise,” “Viechni Pamiat,” and the “Funeral
March”[1] of the fighters for freedom. This last tune is the most
impressive. From a musician’s point of view it is a shockingly bad
tune; but then, as Du Maurier said, one should never listen to
musicians on the subject of music any more than one should listen to
wine merchants on the subject of wine. But it is the tune which to my
mind is exactly fitting for the Russian revolution, with its dogged
melancholy and invincible passion, as fitting as the “Marseillaise”
(which, by the way, the Russian sings in parts and slowly) is totally
unfitting. The “Funeral March” has nothing defiant in it; but it is one
of those tunes which, when sung by a multitude, make one’s flesh
creep; it is commonplace if you will; and it expresses—as it were by
accident—the commonplaceness of all that is determined and
unflinching, mingled with an accent of weary pathos. As it grew dark
torches were brought out, lighting up the red banners and the scarlet
coffin of the unknown veterinary surgeon, who in a second, by a
strange freak of chance, had become a hero, or rather a symbol, an
emblem and a banner, and who was being carried to his last resting
place with a simplicity which eclipsed the pomp of all royal funerals,
and to the sound of a low song of tired but indefatigable sadness
stronger and more formidable than the pæans which celebrate the
triumphs and the pageants of kings.
1. By a strange irony of fate, this tune, which the revolutionaries have made
their own, was originally an official tune, composed probably by some obscure
military bandmaster, and played at the funerals of officers and high officials.
The impression left on my mind by this funeral is deep. As I saw
these hundred thousand men march past so quietly, so simply, in
their bourgeois clothes, singing in careless, almost conversational
fashion, I seemed nevertheless to hear the “tramping of innumerable
armies,” and to feel the breath of the
“Courage never to submit or yield,
And what is else not to be overcome.”

It is impossible for the Government or for any one else to accuse

these people of displaying a provoking attitude, of badgering or
insulting the soldiers or the authorities, or of not being able to keep
order among themselves.