FILE PHOTO: Korean traditional dress for marriage on display at a North Korean clothing store. (© Daily NK)
North Korean officials in Nampo are forcing unmarried women over 28 into arranged marriages, declaring that remaining single is a “non-socialist act” that shirks patriotic duty.
A source in South Pyongan province told Daily NK recently that the party committee of Nampo “recently began arranging forced marriages of women over the age of 28, regarding the act of remaining unmarried despite reaching marriageable age a non-socialist phenomenon.”
The Nampo party committee ordered the city people’s committee and Socialist Patriotic Youth League to actively participate in encouraging young men and women to marry.
The city’s party committee stated that “marriage and childbirth are not private decisions but a question of patriotism, and refusing to marry appears to be a refusal to perform the role a woman should play for the fatherland.” They threatened to “make an organizational issue of people who don’t get married.”
This means young people who intentionally remain single, particularly young women, face political and social disadvantages.
Specifically, the city’s party committee reportedly pressured those refusing marriage by threatening to add their names to labor mobilization lists and classify them as volunteers for work in rural communities, mines, or long-term construction projects.
In response to the Nampo party committee’s policy, the district of Waudo has been arranging forced marriages of unmarried women over 28 since March 19.
Neighborhood watch unit heads and Socialist Patriotic Youth League officials in the district are arranging marriages after compiling lists of unmarried women over 28. Women who refuse are classified as eligible for labor mobilizations as “shirkers of their socialist duty.”
The city’s party committee appears to have implemented this policy due to concerns about the country’s dwindling productive population and military manpower resulting from falling birth rates.
Additionally, the city party committee is targeting young married couples who aren’t trying to have children. The committee has reportedly ordered a list of couples who have intentionally avoided having children, exempting only those diagnosed as infertile.
Young people are protesting this virtual policy of forced marriages and childbirth.
According to the source, young people are saying it is “nonsense for the neighborhood watch unit or organizations to select marriage partners when marriage is such an important life decision” and that women “shouldn’t be forced to marry and have children with men they don’t love.”
Whether the Nampo party committee’s policy is following orders from the Central Committee or is an independent initiative remains unconfirmed. However, such measures have not been observed nationwide.
Consequently, some North Koreans view this policy as an absurd measure driven by the Nampo party committee’s excessive loyalty.
“Army recruits and enterprise workers are indeed in short supply due to the shrinking population, but it’s absurd to force people into marriages to solve the problem,” the source said. “The Nampo city committee is engaging in nonsense to show off to the Central Committee.”
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