Because of the low government wages

North Korean women spend better on their families than men

North Korean working women are the backbone of the family.

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Most families in North Korea depend for their livelihood on working women, as the husband's salary does not cover much of the family's expenses due to the low salary. For this reason, the state was forced to allow women to work. At the same time, the regime continues to force most men to work for the state, but it pays the majority of them very little or nothing at all. Women had more freedom than men to spend time working in markets in order to feed their families, and thus gained some economic power.

However, the woman's additional earnings did not change expectations about her traditional work in the home. Traditional views of family life remain common, with both men and women considering childcare and domestic work to be the core of women's work. "Of course women should take care of children, they are much better than men at that," says Jeong Jin, a 30-year-old woman from the North Korean city of Haesan who fled to the South Korean capital, Seoul, in 2015. She acknowledges that there is a complaint from women about the double burden, but says the fault lies in the system that forces men to work without much pay.

While people blame the state, most families are in disagreement.

Some overburdened wives ask their husbands to help out with the housework or have a say in family decisions.

Many husbands insist that their wives respect and obey them, no matter how much they contribute to the family's livelihood.

Such husbands are subjected to indignities such as "useless" for men who wait for their wives to return home, or what they call "daylights", they are like a lamp in the sunlight, of no use at all.

The most successful marriages seem to be those that combine the wife's economic activity with the husband's political influence.

Jeong says her marriage to a high-ranking police officer has remained a happy one even though they mostly live off what she and her mother earn from smugglers.

"My husband has a little money, but a lot of power," she explains.

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