‘여성’·‘어린이’·‘섹스’를 통해 본 해방 후 북한의 가족문화

Family Culture in Post-Liberation North Korea Observed through Women and Children and Sex

North Korea with a socialist orientation gave affirmative meaning to functions of family, unlike prospect of Marxism that it will become extinct with abolition of private possession. Also Traditional gender roles and patriarchal system rejected by Marxism were recognized as effective mechanisms that can support State policies in family unit. The Supreme Court of Democratic People’s Republic of Korea tried to suppress divorces increasing suddenly with proclamation of law on equality between men and women. Divorces were suppressed because of negative effects on upbringing and education of children. Task of raising revolutionary children was recognized as the most noble mission to women in charge of social and cultural reproduction. Like women and children and teenagers, families were mobilized for realization of national ideology and policies. An attempt to convert home into political space was the starting point. Letters sent to their parents and brothers and sisters and wives and lovers from Korean students studying in the Soviet Union at the time of the Korean War indicate significant shrinking of private space in the home. The politicalization of family that led to shrinking of private space reveals that the power of the State penetrating into home tried to use it as a tool of rule. Also love and sex, medium of reproduction of family were put under the control of the State. Sex under control by various ways was utilized as a means to carry political goal of the State. It was an effective means utilized to criticism against immoral culture of hostile countries and display of moral superiority of their country. North Korea oppressed and covered up sex in case of mobilization of the crowd for nation building. Whereas they utilized it as an exposing means in case of criticism against hostile countries. In that sense, sex in North Korea involved duplicity.