Kyungja Jung – författare

North Korea is in the throes of economic and social, if not political, transition. These changes have a pronounced gender dimension: the crisis of the command economy and the gradual emergence of an informal market economy, where, remarkably, the vast majority of North Korea’s traders and merchants are women. This book examines the complex relationship between gender roles and economic and social changes in North Korea. The book, based on extensive original research, provides rich details of this development, considers how women’s roles in North Korea have developed over time and highlights how women are driving change in other areas of North Korean life too, including family relationships, women’s sexuality and reproductive issues and women’s cultural identity.

North Korea is in the throes of economic and social, if not political, transition. These changes have a pronounced gender dimension: the crisis of the command economy and the gradual emergence of an informal market economy, where, remarkably, the vast majority of North Korea’s traders and merchants are women. This book examines the complex relationship between gender roles and economic and social changes in North Korea. The book, based on extensive original research, provides rich details of this development, considers how women’s roles in North Korea have developed over time and highlights how women are driving change in other areas of North Korean life too, including family relationships, women’s sexuality and reproductive issues and women’s cultural identity.

The Korean women’s movement, which is seen in both Western and non-Western countries as being exemplary in terms of women’s activism, experienced a dramatic change in its direction and strategy in the early 1990s. At the heart of the new approach was an increasing focus on sexual violence, which has had a huge impact on bringing women’s issues onto the public agenda in Korea. This book examines feminist practice in Korea by analyzing the experiences of the country’s first sexual assault center, the Korea Sexual Violence Relief Center. Based on extensive original research, including interviews with activists and extensive participant observation, it explores why feminist activists in South Korea chose to organize around the issue of sexual violence, the strategies it used to do so, what impact the movement has made and what challenges it still faces to achieve its objectives.