Women in DPR Korea

-Society That Respects Women

 Today, countless women are suffering from deprivation of socio-political rights and inequality in different parts of the world. The problem of women still remains a serious matter of international concern.

 However, in the people-centred socialist Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, women are leading a happy life under the care of the state, enjoying the dignity as a flower of the times and of the country.

 The country provides all the women equally and fully with all their rights as social beings, including the rights to work, rest, and free education and medical care as well as political freedom and rights.

 The Korean women, as masters of the country, are taking active part in the socio-political activities with an equal right with men, including those of administering the state; irrespective of job, property status and intellectual standards, they have the right to elect and to be elected, many of them including labour innovators being elected as deputies to the Supreme People’s Assembly and other power organs at all levels, and exercising their right to express their opinions on state administration.

Today, the number of women is increasing at important posts in different fields and units including state and economic organs, scientific, educational and public health organs and cultural institutions.

 The Socialist Constitution, Law on Family, Public Health Law, Socialist Labour Law, Law on the Nursing and Upbringing of Children and other laws and regulations of the state provide a legal guarantee for the positions, roles and rights of women.

 The Korean women enjoy special state and social benefits.

 The Pyongyang Maternity Hospital provides an eloquent proof of this.

 This comprehensive medical service centre for women delivers babies and treats gynecological disorders free of charge. Women, who are admitted to this hospital for delivery, go back homes with their healthy babies after clearly being cured of even the diseases unknown to them still then. Parents with many children are presented with gifts including gold rings and silver daggers, and women who gave birth to many children are awarded the title of Mother Hero.

The Breast Tumour Institute under this hospital conducts check-up of women across the country with state-of-the-art medical facilities and provides the women diagnosed to be suffering from mammary diseases with efficacious medicines at state expense.

Fringe benefits are also given to the women.

 A typical example is the state benefit given to them in their labour life.

 The country makes sure that comprehensive labour safety measures are taken for women in state organs, factories, enterprises and social and cooperative bodies. In particular, back-breaking and hazardous labour is forbidden for them, and more stable and favourable working conditions and environment are provided to those with nursing babies and pregnant ones.

 It provides the working women with such conditions that ensure they can take an active part in social labour, and builds on a preferential basis nurseries, kindergartens and amenities lest they experience inconvenience in their work. Working women with more than three children work for fewer hours than others, but they receive the same wages as theirs.

 And it gives prominence to the women with many children, accords them preferential treatment and takes special measures for protecting them.

 Recently, women who gave birth to more than three children have been issued with a special certificate for medical treatment; as a part of this measure, not only the women but also their husbands and their children, who are yet to graduate from senior middle school, can get medical service at any hospital.

 How the country respects women can be clearly seen through a grand congratulatory performance held for them in the presence of the national leader to mark the International Women’s Day and the palace-like hostels built by the state for the working women and the parties arranged for them at these hostels.

 Under such benevolence, the women are working free of inconveniences, displaying their talents and wisdom, for the prosperity of their country in different fields including industry, agriculture, national defence, art and literature, education and public health.

 Among them are scientists, farm managers who have opened up a new phase in farming in the northern highlands and east coast areas, athletes who have exalted the honour of their country with gold medals, medical workers who have snatched patients from the jaws of death by donating their blood and bones, and road maintenance workers in remote mountain areas.

 The DPRK should be called a country where the dignity and rights of women are provided at the highest level in the grand flower garden of prioritizing and respecting them.

-Women of the Democratic People’s Republic  of Korea Celebrating the International Women’s Day

March 8, the International Women’s Day, is a national holiday in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. Women in the country celebrate the holiday receiving flowers of respect and love of their families and society.

-Ordinary Woman Who Became a Deputy to City People’s Assembly

 In the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, ordinary working people freely take part in the elections to State power organs. They have the right to elect and to be elected, irrespective of job, property status and educational background.

 As everyone knows, even the elections to the local people's assemblies, to say nothing of the elections to the Supreme People’s Assembly, are held amid great expectations and interest of the citizens.

 July 19, 2015, a Sunday, witnessed elections to the People's Assembly of County, City, Province held in the country.

 A candidate for the Sub-constituency No. 102 of Constituency No. 107 for the election to the Pyongyang Municipal People’s Assembly was Ho Myong Gum, a driver of the Ryonmot Trolley Bus Company.

 She is an ordinary kind of woman who can be found anywhere in the country. What is extraordinary about her is the fact that she has been working as a trolley bus driver for more than 30 years since finishing secondary school. Her husband Choe Hong Gi is working as her co-driver. They have covered about two million kilometres up to now.

 The wife loves her job as she feels pride in providing traffic convenience to the citizens of the capital city. With such pride, she has driven the trolley bus from the Pyongyang Railway Station to Ryonmot-dong every day.

  She says that she had a difficult period, though. It was in the late 1990s when the country was on an Arduous March due to the unprecedented sanctions and blockade by the hostile forces against her country and natural disasters that hit it for several consecutive years. Because of a shortage of electricity, trolley buses were not operating properly. But she did not abandon her job. She regarded her job as a duty assigned to her by the country. The harder the times were, the more efforts she made to remain faithful to her duty.

In fact, it was easier said than done for a woman to work almost all year round for thirty years. But she found the worth of her life in seeing the bright faces of people who were getting on and off her trolley bus and the daily-changing streets of the city. The pure conscience and patriotism of the woman driver who has remained faithful to her job, whether recognized or not, touched the heartstrings of all people.

 Ho was nominated as a candidate to the Pyongyang Municipal People's Assembly. On the election day Kim Jong Un, President of the State Affairs, personally came to the polling station.

 Having congratulated Ho Myong Gum on her nomination as a candidate, he said that if she had worked as a trolley bus driver for 30 years since her girlhood, she had remained faithful to her job for so long. Then he encouraged her to work harder as a representative of the people so that she could live up to their expectations.

 After receiving a vote from the chairperson of the election committee, he voted for her. Having come out of the polling booth, he, holding her hand, asked her to do more work as befitting a representative of the people.

 Such a moving story can be created only in a country of the people where the working people support their sovereignty by their devoted efforts and where the people are the masters of everything and everything serves them.