Man-Made No More: A Review of ‘Women-led Grassroots Capitalism’, by Dalton and Jung
Dalton, Bronwen and Jung, Kyung-ja. North Korea’s Women-led Grassroots Capitalism London: Routledge, 2023, 222 pp, ISBN 9781003082903.
Women clean shellfish on a dock in Wonsan, North Korea. | Image: Sino-NK.
North Korea’s Women-led Grassroots Capitalism is a seminal work authored by Bronwen Dalton, a professor of management, and Kyung-ja Jung, associate professor in social and political change, both at the University of Technology, Sydney (UTS). This book represents the significant culmination of their established scholarly trajectory, which has a long-standing and consistent focus on the economic empowerment and changing roles of North Korean women.
Their expertise was cemented by major prior academic papers including “Rhetoric Versus Reality for the Women of North Korea: Mothers of the Revolution” (2006)[1] and “North Korea’s Informal Markets and the Increasing Role of Women” (2011).[2] It is reinforced by a major research project led by Dalton (2013–2016) investigating women’s role in the emergence of a nascent capitalist economy in North Korea. Critically, their work aims to challenge the external ‘vulnerability’ thesis that positions women as victims to economic and social change, instead recognising women as active agents of social change and challenging assumptions about the intersection of gender, state ideology, and marketisation in the DPRK.
The book seeks to investigate the complex relationship between gender roles and a changing North Korea to provide a more nuanced and gender-aware understanding of North Korean society. It meticulously traces the shift across three key eras: the pre-famine period (1960s–1990s); the grassroots capitalism era (mid-1990s to late 2000s); and the current Kim Jong-un period of quasi-capitalism.
Methodologically, this study fills a crucial gap within the highly restricted field of North Korean research. Due to the extreme scarcity and questionable reliability of official data, research often relies on limited interpretations of defector accounts. While this book does employ 52 in-depth defector interviews, the sample’s robustness is ensured by its wide temporal coverage, spanning defection periods from 1994 to 2015, and its broad age range, including interviewees from their 20s to their 70s. This large sample provides micro-level, grassroots, and vivid first-hand data. Through these individual life narratives, the authors explore the massive gap between official rhetoric and daily realities, revealing social structural changes in market activities and family relations.
Chapter One effectively sets the historical context by reviewing the evolution of North Korean laws and policies concerning women from 1945, when the Korean Peninsula first came under separate Soviet and US spheres, up to the present. This chronological analysis allows the reader to critically track the shifting nature of women’s official roles within the state’s ideological framework. Crucially, the chapter highlights the persistent and widening discrepancy between state rhetoric and lived reality.
Building on this, Chapter Two, “The auntie economy”, strikes at the core of the book’s argument, establishing women as the principal agents in North Korea’s grassroots economic shift. Following the collapse of the Public Distribution System (PDS) coupon allocation in the mid-1990s, women, rather than the state, became the dominant force in procuring consumer goods through the informal labour market. Refugee reports estimate that 75 percent to 80 percent of market traders are women (p. 40). The authors provide detailed, vivid examples of women’s entrepreneurial activities, such as making alcohol or selling tailored clothes and imported appliances, often assuming the role of the primary breadwinner (p. 42).
While men still faced the social obligation to attend work despite receiving little or no pay, effectively “tied down” by the system, the economic collapse liberated women from state labour requirements (p. 44). The authors characterise these women as “survivalist entrepreneurs”, developing their economic skills by necessity rather than opportunism. (p. 56). This new economic agency, however, also pushed some women to engage in high-risk ventures, including human trafficking and the dealing of drugs including methamphetamine and opium, in pursuit of profit (p. 56). Ultimately, these activities granted women greater economic autonomy while also forcing them into precarious situations due to a lack of economic alternatives.
In establishing the book’s core thesis, female-led grassroots capitalism in the post-PDS era, Dalton and Jung then meticulously examine the chain reaction this economic transition has had on North Korean social life. The analytical logic extends from the economic base to the social superstructure, systematically exploring how women’s improved economic status has led to the reconfiguration of gender roles (Chapter 3), the rise of aesthetic and consumption culture (Chapter 4), the increasing exercise of reproductive agency (Chapter 5), and the capitalisation of marriage models (Chapter 6). Finally, the authors shift focus to the symbolic role of elite women (Chapter 7) and critically evaluate the potential for this bottom-up economic agency to translate into meaningful political change (Chapter 8). By ultimately escalating the analysis to the political level, the book completes a comprehensive trajectory from grassroots action to systemic impact.
A further significant contribution of this book is the meticulous detailing of how this economic shift has inevitably triggered a fundamental change in gender roles and familial power dynamics within North Korean society. Women becoming breadwinners challenged traditional North Korean ideology. This novel family dynamic, emerging after the famine of 1994-1998, or ‘Arduous March’, breaks the prevailing stereotype of the submissive North Korean woman shaped by Confucian and socialist ideologies.
The interviews nonetheless reveal the profound symbolic importance of the male figure, despite their diminished economic contribution. One defector described her husband as “the family’s neon sign”, a representative of the family as a whole in wider society (p. 65). Yet, the widespread phenomenon of men remaining tied to their non-paying official posts led to the degrading nickname “dogs” for men, guarding the home, while women earned the money (p. 67). This economic empowerment has even led to talk of “the era of the matriarchy” and an increasing preference for the birth of daughters because they are now seen as capable of generating income (p. 75).
The authors frame the significant shifts in attitudes towards love, intimacy, and marriage following the Arduous March as a “sexual revolution” (p. 129). The study powerfully illustrates this transformation through the experiences of the “jangmadang generation”, or those who have grown up in an era of informal marketisation, particularly in the realm of bodily autonomy. The research moves beyond the typical narrative of North Korean women lacking sex education and contraception, showing that this generation exhibits greater freedom in decisions regarding their bodies and fertility. For instance, women utilise the black market to obtain contraceptives (p. 116-117). This economic agency clearly demonstrates grassroots capitalism penetrating domestic life, as market-working women prioritise hiring private nannies over using low-quality state facilities, even though authorities strongly criticised the practice as “non-socialist and anti-socialist” (p. 122).
Economic hardship also led to practices such as cohabiting without a formal wedding or only with a marriage registration licence, as survival became the priority (p. 139). The move toward a capitalist system has led to an increase in hypergamy, where money, rather than songbun (social status), is the new valued metric (p. 141). Newer trends include later marriages and high divorce rates, both attributable to capitalism due to women’s greater economic independence and sense of autonomy. However, this is tempered by persistent disputes over husband’s unchanging expectations of gender roles, sometimes leading women to flee to China in search of a better life.
Disturbingly, the commodification of women’s sexuality through prostitution and human trafficking has also increased as a result of sex being used to cope with economic problems, targeting vulnerable women seeking to improve their economic position (p.155). Taken together, these contradictory findings underscore the rich primary data’s crucial insight: the analysis offers valuable comparative material on how individual survival strategies, against a backdrop of state failure, unintentionally drive massive social and ideological shifts.
The final chapter addresses the crucial question of whether economic participation translates into political change, with the authors concluding that women’s economic participation is unlikely to immediately translate into such a transformation. While the rise of the jangmadang informal market economy has fostered greater economic autonomy and a corresponding growth in distrust toward the government, evidenced by the sentiment, “officials only think about one thing – how to fill their own pockets” (p. 192), the state apparatus retains significant coercive power. Despite the economic challenge posed by those more interested in developing their entrepreneurial skills than socialism, the state still seeks to control the populace “through fear and coercive means” (p. 194). Female traders are a frequent target of this control, subjected to verbal abuse and compelled to write self-criticism reports by state officials. Given the state’s continued ability to repress visible political organisation, a critical gap remains: the economic agency, while disruptive socially, has yet to find a pathway into formal political power.
A limitation of the conclusion is the lack of explicit prognostication on the long-term potential for economic shifts to affect political change. Future scholarly work should aim to investigate the normalisation of women as primary breadwinners, a development that in itself constitutes a profound social revolution. Over time, this process of normalisation may fundamentally erode the legitimacy of the state’s patriarchal and economic authority, thereby creating new, albeit gradual, avenues for political influence. Building upon this analysis, the authors could have further contemplated the practical policy implications, specifically outlining how women’s burgeoning economic power might be strategically leveraged to exert political influence and drive potential institutional reform. This includes considering avenues such as utilising economic bargaining power to facilitate localised policy adjustments and advocating for the formal institutional recognition of their economic roles.
A second significant limitation is the insufficient development of a robust feminist critique, particularly given the unique nature of North Korean women becoming the primary breadwinners, a model rare in many state economies and one which necessitates deeper theoretical engagement. From a global feminist perspective, the acquisition of this economic autonomy is fundamentally paradoxical: while Western feminism typically views earned income as a symbol of liberation and professional equality, the North Korean women’s model is driven purely by state system failure and survival pressure. This imposed economic “empowerment” results in the extreme “double burden”: women must bear both traditional domestic responsibilities and the entire pressure of supporting the family. This autonomy, achieved at the cost of immense personal sacrifice and doubled labour, fundamentally challenges the global feminist definition of genuine empowerment, which should not be premised on increased labour and sacrifice.
Furthermore, this form of agency is often entangled in moral grey areas. While women gain greater economic autonomy, this success is sometimes achieved through participation in high-risk, often illicit activities, including black market trading, human trafficking, and drug dealing. This raises a profound theoretical dilemma: when a woman’s economic agency is achieved at the expense of personal safety and the potential exploitation of others (especially other women), does this still align with the feminist ideals of self-determination and justice? It blurs the line between autonomy and the commodification of the self and others.
In sum, North Korea’s Women-led Grassroots Capitalism is a compelling and essential read for anyone seeking to move beyond traditional, monolithic views of North Korean society. By centring the experiences of women entrepreneurs and employing rigorous methodology, Dalton and Jung successfully demonstrate how state failure has paradoxically fostered a degree of social, cultural, and reproductive autonomy for women. The book’s groundbreaking focus on evolving gender roles, aesthetic expression, and family dynamics offers invaluable insights into the empowerment of North Korean women within the state socialist economy.
[1] Kyung-ja Jung and Bronwen Dalton, “Rhetoric Versus Reality for the Women of North Korea: Mothers of the Revolution,” Asian Survey, 46.5 (2006), pp. 741–60, doi:10.1525/as.2006.46.5.741.
[2] Kyung-ja Jung, North Korea’s Informal Markets and the Increasing Role of Women. (2011). Conference: Korean Studies Association of Australasia Biennial Conference, University of New South Wales.
