The Women of North Korea

Professor Bronwen Dalton (D.Phil. Oxon) is the Head of the Department of Management and the Director of the Masters of Not-for-Profit and Social Enterprise Program at the University of Technology, Sydney. Bronwen was chief investigator on the Australia Research Council funded project, North Korea's Quiet Transformation: Women in the Rise of the Informal Market – the first major research project to investigate the role played by women in the emergence of a nascent capitalist economy in North Korea. She has had a long association with South Korea – first living there as an exchange student and then completing her Masters at Yonsei University. She completed her PhD on Korean civic groups combating corruption at the University of Oxford. She speaks Korean and visits South Korea annually. She has been to North Korea three times.

The most transformative changes shaping North Korean government and society are taking place on the ground in the everyday lives and these changes have a pronounced gender dimension. In short, women are destabilising two fundamental pillars of North Korea – socialism and deep-rooted patriarchy.

This lecture will review North Korean regime law and policy as they relate to women and discuss:
- The role of women in the emergence of these markets and the unique characteristics of women’s entrepreneurship in North Korea
- Changes in human relations, expression of private desire, and sexual norms and breakdown of the traditional patriarchal family
- Changing modes of consumption and transformation of beauty standards, fashion, self-presentation and care
- The regime’s response to new values of women and the jangmadang generation