Fashion and the Social Construction of Femininity in North Korea

Abstract

In this paper we argue that North Korea’s socioeconomic transformation has had a profound and yet under-appreciated impact on the social construction of femininity. Drawing on 45 in-depth interviews with North Korean refugees, interviews with regular visitors to North Korea and NGO workers, and our own field notes from trips to North Korea, we analyse changes over three discernible (yet overlapping) economic periods: the 1960s–90s pre-famine period; the mid-1990s to late 2000s grassroots capitalism era; and the current Kim Jong Un period of quasi-capitalism. As dress is a discursive daily practice of gender, we focus on the practice of femininity as shown through North Korean women’s fashion choices. We argue that images of women in state propaganda have been shaped primarily by male leaders, but norms of femininity have shaped, and also been shaped by, women themselves. That is, the recent trend for North Korean women to dress in hyper-feminine styles can be explained in terms of women remaking themselves and planning their future lives.

Keywords:

• North Korea
• North Korean women
• transitional economy
• women’s status
• marketisation
• femininity
• fashion

Notes

1. These trips to North Korea were planned as part of an Australian Research Council funded project. We concede the limitations involved when taking trips to North Korea, and non-participant observation and note-taking were conducted with the intention that these be used only as supplementary data to inform the findings of our interviews.

2. Although a very small number of North Korea’s elite dressed in foreign couture during earlier periods, this never represented a fashion “trend”. This and other “decadent” tastes were largely indulged in private, and often among elite North Koreans living overseas. They were thus part of the secret world of the Kims and their inner circle that was never aired in public.

3. For more photographs of this style see the Tongil Tours website: https://tongiltours.com/north-korea-tours/

4. This aligns with the findings of Huisman and Hondagneu-Sotelo (2005, p. 49), who found that the dress codes of Bosnian refugees in Vermont were typically enforced (and reinforced) by the disapproval of older women in the community of less conventional styles.