North Korean women lead the way, whether at the Olympics or in the economy

Adam Cathcart says it should not be overlooked that North Korea is using a female presence – from the leader’s sister to the hockey team and cheerleaders – to make a positive impression at the Olympics, as women matter more and more to its future

Reading Time:3 minutes

North Korean cheerleaders perform during the women's preliminary round ice hockey match between the unified Korea team and Switzerland at the Pyeongchang 2018 Winter Olympics on February 10. Photo: AFP

Published: 11:00am, 15 Feb 2018Updated: 11:21pm, 15 Feb 2018

As is obvious to anyone watching inter-Korean engagement and cultural diplomacy unfold these past two weeks in Seoul and Pyeongchang, North Korean women are playing leading roles. Whether as cheerleaders, athletes, musicians or diplomatic envoys, North Korea’s push for prominence via the Games has had a feminine visage.

But what about the North Korean women we aren’t seeing under the lights of Olympic torches?

Analysis of the gendered aspects of North Korean “soft power” is important, but such analysis should also look into North Korean women’s relationship with the outside world more generally. The majority of North Korean defectors, small market salespeople and overseas labourers are women, after all.

North Korea is putting women at the forefront of its initial engagement with Seoul – clearly a winning strategy thus far. But it has suffered some very bad losses in the past couple of years with respect to its other foreign-facing enterprises, which are dominated by a similar gender imbalance, particularly in China.

In 2018, North Korea faces some unique conditions surpassing the obvious opportunity presented by the Olympic Games which, in part, explain the Kim regime’s sudden outreach to Seoul. As the idiosyncratic occupants of the US executive branch continue to explain and exploit, 2017 saw intense pressure on the regime via repeated waves of new UN, US, South Korean, Japanese, British and EU sanctions.

There is of course no measurable ceiling for “maximum”, nor is the role of violence or coercion on the part of the US ever properly explained – including the president’s jagged, though currently paused, queue of North Korea threats on Twitter. But the “maximum pressure” catchphrase for once seems appropriate as a descriptor.