He is afraid that things will get out of hand

North Korean president gives important advice to women

• The North Korean leader advises women to fight foreign culture.

  Reuters

• Women dressed in bright colors during the conference.

  EPA

picture

North Korean President Kim Jong Un did not attend the recent seventh conference of the Socialist Federation of Korean Women, according to state media, but the women absorbed the advice he gave them in the hall, where he advised them, and even instructed them, in a letter read by a senior North Korean official, that they should Wearing traditional clothes that “make all aspects of life infused with our national flavor, taste and passion.” Immediately the women came out wearing brightly colored dresses and blue face masks.

Kim also instructed them that they should sing patriotic songs on construction sites, and write letters of encouragement to male soldiers.

In this totalitarian state, they were left with few options.

Above all, Kim instructed the women to protect their children from "alien ideology, culture and lifestyles".

In fact, he said, things they considered simple, such as clothes and unusual speaking styles, "remained a malignant tumor that threatens the lives and future of our grandchildren," according to North Korea News, a Seoul-based media outlet.

Kim's comments were the latest in a string of criticisms from Pyongyang against foreign influence, which the isolated country sees as a serious threat to its existence. .

North Korea recently doubled the maximum penalty for possession of such contraband to 15 years of hard labor, and succeeded in pressuring South Korea to ban sending flash drives, leaflets, or money across the border.

But after closing its borders completely last year to prevent the spread of the Corona virus, the country is now facing such severe food shortages that Kim publicly admitted last week that the situation was very "tense".

With domestic issues escalating, it is not surprising that Kim has once again warned of foreign influence, said North Korea specialist Rüdiger Frank.

"North Korea is in the midst of an economic crisis, and this strategy that Kim Jong Un is adopting to deal with the crisis is an internal orientation and a strengthening of the role of the state," Frank, a professor at the University of Vienna, wrote in an email to the Washington Post. It is the logical result.

popular culture

Frank says he saw the power of popular culture during his teenage years in East Germany in the 1980s.

So is the case with the father of the current North Korean leader, Kim Jong Il, who warned a quarter of a century ago of the role of popular culture in the collapse of the Soviet bloc, and Frank also says that his son learned the same lesson.

“Now, new technologies such as digital media, mobile devices, etc. are making it increasingly difficult to isolate the population from South Korean culture,” he wrote, adding, “Kim Jong Un’s statements are confirmation that North Korean youth are under a great deal of influence from this kind of foreign culture.” .

Kim sometimes seeks to portray himself as a cultural reformer and has made some symbolic moves on gender issues.

The authoritarian leader sent his sister, Kim Yo Jong, to the 2018 Winter Olympics, a trip that made Jong the first in the Kim family to visit South Korea since 1950.

His wife, Ri Sol-ju, unlike her predecessors, appears regularly in public, sometimes even walking side by side with her husband — "in a public display of passion and social equality", according to former North Korea Post correspondent Anna Fifield.

In her book on Kim, Fifield stated: "In a country where the wives of senior cadres wore the formless socialist clothing that made everyone equal, Ri was a remarkably modern figure."

North Korea passed the Gender Equality Act as early as 1946, and its centralized, communist-run economy relies heavily on working women.

But it is still "a very patriarchal de facto society," Frank says, and sexual violence against women is widely documented, often with unpunished.

Kim's letter underscores something that has become increasingly clear in his recent speeches, according to Frank.

That is, "when you face a crisis, you either back off or go forward," and concludes, "Kim Jong Un's reaction, including his aggressive attempt to keep the way teenagers look at things, shows that the North Korean leader is not a reformer."

• Kim calls on women to sing patriotic songs on construction sites, and write letters of encouragement to male soldiers.

• The wife of the Korean leader, Ri Sol Ju, walks regularly in public, sometimes walking side by side with her husband in a public display of affection and social equality.

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