Mobile North Korean women and their places in the Sino-North Korea borderland

Abstract

This article explores the situations of people living at the China-North Korea borderland. Contrary to the general understanding of North Korean migrants – as victims of the North Korean brutal state and economic impoverishment – many North Koreans at the Sino-North Korea borderland cross the border (a border river) as a matter of everyday practice. This article thus contests the general restrictive stereotypes that frame North Korean mobility, and argues that many of them are calculative agents actively balancing the costs and benefits of migration. A decision of migration often takes into account North Koreans’ spatial perception, intimate human network of relatives, and sense of familiarity with language, feelings and emotions for place and people, with little reference to the political persecution or economic deprivation usually depicted by the media.

Keywords:

• China-North Korea borderland
• cross-border migration
• women migrants
• spatial perception
• cultural and linguistic zones

Notes

1. The Arduous March refers to the North Korean famine that occurred from 1995 to 1998. After the death of Kim Il-Sung, the economic situation of North Korea dramatically deteriorated. It is generally agreed that a minimum of one million deaths occurred between 1995 and 1998 due to the Arduous March.

2. Neoclassical economics of migration explains labor migration in the process of economic development. It basically theorizes international migration in relation to supply and demand of labor. Bringing in a more micro approach, neoclassical economics argues that a migrant is a rational actor who carefully calculates cost-benefit. As neoclassical economics have been criticized in many ways, the new economics of migration theory attempts to revise it and to bring in new insights that migration decisions are made by larger units of related people such as families rather than solely by individual actors (Massey et al. 1993, 431–440).

3. There are slight differences in the stated length of the border. According to Onishi in The New York Times, the length is 1,400 km long; another leading scholar in South Korea offers 1,376 km (O. Lee 2011).

4. Travel permission to China lasts for 90 days, but in recent years the permissible stay has been reduced to 60 days (Radio Free Asia, September, 25, 2014). To gain travel permission to China, bribery money of US$100–200 is typically needed.

5. There is no official data for this. However, during fieldwork in Dandong in Summer 2015, a North Korean government officer stated that there are 30,000 legal North Korean workers in Dandong, working in light industry and restaurants, mostly joint ventures between China and North Korea. North Korea offers labor and Chinese businessmen invest capital for raw materials and production sites.

6. Their salary is between 250–300 US dollars per month. Chinese businessmen normally pay workers’ salaries to personnel from the state political security department. The North Korean government gives only 150–180 US dollars to the workers, and the rest goes to the government (KOTRA report 2014; interview with an ethnic Korean businessman who employs 200 North Korean workers in his factory).