베트남 통일의 교훈 : 여성의 사회통합 과정을 중심으로

Lessons from the Unification of Vietnam : Focusing on the Women's Integration into the Unification Process

There are two ways of getting lessons from the unification process of Vietnam. One lesson derives from the integration process of the two different socio-economic structures, those are the socialist North Vietnam and the capitalist South Vietnam, after the unification in 1975. The other lesson is from the system, transformation process, which has implemented with the Vietnamese style of perestroika and glasnost, "Doi Moi" since 1986. The unification of Vietnam is surely on going process. Though, scholars shed different lights on the meaning of the Vietnam unification, we can explore a couple of implications of the Vietnam unification on the Korean unification building process. However, it is unfortunate to find a very few articles or publications directly dealing with "women's problems" during the unification in Vietnam. In this article, such issues as gender-related discourse of nationalism, paternal patriarchy of the state socialism, the continuity of traditional kinship structure are discussed hoping to reveal what the Vietnam women might have experienced during the unification. In addition to these issues, effects of the declining social welfare policy, marginalization of women enforced by the so-called "state class relation", and recovering of the traditional sex role division of labor are discussed. From the discussions, we found several clues that the Vietnam women are emerging as one of the victimized groups during the unification process, which is almost the same experience as that of women in German unification. So, we can assume that there would be a good possibility of the North Korean women to be the most discriminated group, if any form of unification proceeds in the Korean peninsula.