ABSTRACT
In the Marxist-Leninist understanding, resolving the “woman question” was an important condition for success of the socialist revolution and creation of an equal and just communist society. The Soviet Union and most other socialist party-states approached it by bringing women into the public life and workforce. Outwardly, the “showcase of socialism in East Asia,” the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, also followed the Soviet example, adopting laws on gender equality and emancipation. However, while in many ways the Workers’ Party of Korea (WPK) indeed closely emulated the Soviet Union of the 1930s, that did not extend to the social sphere and to gender policies. This chapter explores the formation and formalization of the WPK's gender policies in the 1950s–1960s, including their pedagogical aspect of educating loyal citizens as a means to strengthen the Party's and its leader's position. It also looks at the differences between North Korea's approach to the “woman question” and that of its “fraternal” socialist countries, including the Soviet Union, the initial role model, and the PRC, its closest neighbor. On the North Korean soil, the Marxist-Leninist concept of women as active participants in public life and important addition to labor force was transformed into “mothers of the nation” tasked with providing overall support to the Party's policies and upbringing of the next generation of revolutionary fighters with loyalty to the Party and ultimately to the Great Leader Comrade Kim Il-sung.
