North Korea punishes single couples living together

North Korea is sending unmarried couples living together to serve time in labor camps, saying they are poisoning the country’s socialist society, sources there told Radio Free Asia.

“If the couples lived in a common-law marriage for less than a year, the punishment will be three months’ imprisonment in a labor training camp,” a source in Chongju, in the northwestern province of North Pyongan, told the Korean Service. of RFA on condition of anonymity for security reasons.

“If it exceeds three years, they will spend at least two years in the labor camp,” the source said.

Unmarried couples, or those who did not register their marriages with the authorities, fall under the umbrella term “8.3 couples,” a slang term that refers to any couple who for some reason lacks legitimacy.

The term gets its name from a government directive issued on August 3, 1984, which encouraged factories to earn extra money beyond their state-set profit quotas by reusing waste materials. It can also refer to people who have extramarital affairs.

The crackdown on 8.3 couples is part of a larger government effort to eliminate “capitalist” or “anti-socialist” culture from infiltrating society, with more and more harsh consequences for activities that the government considers be improper of a loyal citizen.

The government announced it would begin investigating common-law marriages on February 22, when the Social Security Ministry listed the practice among other anti-partisan and counter-revolutionary social crimes, the North Pyongan resident said.

The list also included robbery, rape, kidnapping of children, violence against Party or government officials and their families, writing anonymous complaint letters and graffiti, and said the crimes would be “ruthlessly punished,” it said.

“Immediately after announcing the proclamation, the judicial authorities took measures so that the residents voluntarily turned themselves in to those who had committed the different crimes that threaten the socialist system,” the source said. “Couples in common-law marriages, whose marriages are not legally registered, were told to give up within a month.”

neighborhood watch units

However, most people in common-law marriages have not given up, he said.

“As a result, judicial authorities have been directly investigating 8.3 couples since the beginning of April.”

Leaders of the neighborhood watch unit in the city of Tokchon visited every home in their jurisdiction to find out which residents were living in common-law marriages, another source in South Pyongan province, north of the capital Pyongyang, told RFA. under condition of anonymity to speak freely. .

“(They) went house to house to confirm the citizenship cards of each couple in early April and prepared a list of all common-law couples who did not register their marriages,” he said. “They will deliver that list to the Ministry of Security and Surveillance.”

The source said common-law marriages are more common in cities and vary from region to region.

“I live in the Hungdok neighborhood and there are 25 homes in my surveillance unit. Of these, four were listed as 8.3 couples,” she said. “The bigger the city, the more cases are discovered.”

Common-law marriages experienced a rapid increase after the 1994-1998 famine, as women began to discover that being legally united to a man was a hindrance rather than an asset, according to a North Korean fugitive who left. in 2017 and resettled in the South. , and identified himself to the RFA under the pseudonym Kim Chang-jin.

Due to the collapse of the national ration system, most women had to leave home to run businesses to support their families, leading to greater independence from men, giving them less incentive to marry legally.

Yoon Bo Young, a researcher at Dongguk University in Seoul, told RFA that 8.3 couples began to become more common due to North Korea’s patriarchal culture, which is a disadvantage for women in legal marriages.

“In North Korea, the state interferes with many facets of a woman’s life, including giving instructions on how women should do their hair and how they should wear their clothes,” she said.

“It is difficult for the residents to live and eat. When the entire nation suffers, that misery is not shared by the entire population, but it is exceptionally hardest for the weak and women. That is why there is an increase of 8.3 couples”.

She said that during difficult times, men can take out their anger on their wives, but married women have nowhere to go for relief. North Korean authorities tend to ignore cases of domestic violence between a legally married husband and wife, but if a couple is not legally married, the abuser is usually punished.

Yoon said North Korea’s strong demands for socialist moral and ethical standards are driving the increase in the level of punishment against social problems, but he said North Korea’s social order cannot be stabilized if the lives of residents they do not stabilize first.

Translated by Claire Shinyoung Oh Lee. Edited by Eugene Whong and Malcolm Foster.