| Park Young-ja Research Professor Ewha Institute of Unification Studies Ewha Womans University |
I. Introduction
North Korea’s “Economic Management Improvement Measures” of July 1, 2002, evaluated as a partial reform of the country’s socialist system, approved the introduction of corporate management based on market principles through autonomy in corporate finance, market order in prices and wages, realistic foreign exchange rates, a strengthened role for currency in national economy, relaxation of control over small-scale businesses and a partial overhaul of social security system. The “General Market System,” introduced in March 2003, further enlarged the role of the market in commerce and distribution, adding industrial goods to the scope of merchandise, which had been limited to agricultural and local products. The 2003 measure officially recognized the role of currency and market in North Korean society, and decisively affected its price and wage structures.
Since 2003, the widened market effect on prices and wages has dramatically changed the lives of North Korean workers, driving them into unofficial labor for survival. According to many accounts from North Korean defectors since 2006, new types of work and labor markets have developed and a sort of class division – into lower, middle and upper levels – has emerged. They also reported that only about 20 percent of North Korean workers were receiving salaries or food rations from their workplaces because only that percentage of North Korean industrial facilities were operating. Only the employees at military industrial facilities or other key industrial plants can maintain the pre-food crisis level of employment in the North. Other workers cannot engage in normal labor as long as shortages of power and raw materials disrupt production.
How then can the large numbers of sidelined North Koreans survive without wages or rations? Starting with this question, the present study examines “marginal working,” which has drastically changed the North’s labor scene. The study uses Erving Goffman’s methodology of analyzing the situation and frame of interaction in daily life; looks into the expansion of “abnormal labor for survival-level compensation, which evades official labor statistics and disregards social rules” (Yu Hong-jun 2005, 189); and explores the labor market in the North on the basis of its changing circumstances and structure after the 2003 adoption of market system.
II. Viewpoint and Method of Study
This study is based on information obtained in interviews with North Korean refugees who left the country in recent years. The study is concerned with the changing patterns of North Korean workers’ labor routine, their individual consciousness about labor and their illegal work for survival. Forty-one defectors were interviewed while others were surveyed twice through questionnaires. Most of the respondents were from the Chinese border areas of North Hamgyong Province, where trespassing into China is relatively easier than other parts of North Korea. It is assumed that changes in labor patterns are less conspicuous in the Pyongyang-South Pyongan Province area which is one of the main farming zones in North Korea and is known to be enjoying relatively greater benefits from the North Korean regime. Although the interviewees did not evenly represent different North Korean regions, they had fairly extensive knowledge about labor routines in the country owing to their wide experience in travel and business activities.
The transcripts of their interviews illustrate personal experiences of individuals including both organized and unorganized facts, which differ from theoretical concepts and abstracts. Thus, this paper deals with detailed conditions surrounding the daily lives of North Korean workers since 2003.
III. Expansion of Marginal Working
“Marginal work,” or marginal job, refers to informal labor performed for minimum compensation. Income from this form of labor, which occasionally violates social rules, is not included in official statistics of economic activities. In a capitalist society, marginal workers may include hired farmhands, maids, menial service employees, waiters, laundry washers and other people who occupy the lowest rungs of the labor structure. They also include those engage in “deviant work” such as prostitution, thievery and gambling. These forms of antisocial, immoral and illegal activity are still recognized marginal jobs because they are done to earn a living.
According to the testimonies of the defectors, most marginal workers in North Korea are day laborers, temporary farmhands and various personal service providers such as market guards, tenant-style farmers, housemaids, private tutors, painters, proxies for compulsory labor, and employees at foreign catering services.
Marginal work mushroomed in the North under the light-industry promotion drive launched by Kim Jong-il on August 3, 1984, and spread further in subsequent years as North Korea took partial economic reform measures in 2002 and 2003, recognizing the market system being created from the bottom. The following is a refugee’s testimony:
“If there are some 50,000 kinds of jobs in South Korea, North Korea does not have that many kinds of jobs but there are tens of thousands of ways North Korean people survive. Sales jobs alone are divided in infinite ways. People sell foodstuff, fabrics, fish, rice, and bicycle ball bearings that no one seems to be interested in. They wait all day long to sell just one item before going home. At train stations and bus stops, they wait with their carts to carry luggage or people. There are housemaids, live-in maids and part-time maids. Above these people there are the powerful people who carry their goods by special trains…”
In the capitalist system, marginal work can be classified into four categories: 1) part-time service jobs which are lowly treated but recognized as legitimate, 2) lawful but socially despised work such as striptease, 3) illegal but socially tolerated work such as small-time smuggling, and 4) illegal and socially not tolerated activities such as prostitution, gambling and drug trafficking. North Korea has a different legal system and social rules but marginal work in the North takes similar forms, including all four categories.
1. Daily Paid Labor, Proxy Work, Personal Hiring
Day work was the form of labor most frequently mentioned in the interviews. Ten out of 100 North Koreans live on their income from doing menial work for other people. A neighborhood of relatively higher income level has a larger portion of people living on sundry work. Out of every 10 household employees, two or three work as maids and the rest usually deliver water. About 7 percent do plumbing or similar house repairing work.
“A household helper, if not a chauffeur, is hired, but not openly because they are afraid of bad gossip. So acquaintances are asked to do day work in return for payment. If you say you earn at least 2,000 or 3,000 won a day by vending goods in the street, the employer offers 5,000 won. Apartments have no elevators and everyone has to walk up to the 12th or 13th floor. So the hired person earns 1,000 won per 1,000 liter of water, something like that. From 8 o’clock in the morning until evening after dinner at 7-8 o’clock, when we usually have dinner in the North. So it’s about 9 or 10 o’clock when you’ve clean up and come home.”(Case 25)
“Men are not good at selling. They go into repair work and sometimes they stay at the workplace for about a week, sleeping and eating there. Wives like it very much because men do not eat at home while earning money. It is illegal and they have to do it secretly.”(Case 26)
In North Korea, people are mobilized for various projects and farm aid. During the rice planting season in spring and harvesting in autumn, some people living in cities avoid going to the collective work sites by hiring proxies because they have to do their sales work. This is the lowest type of marginal working to earn food or wage on daily basis.
“They announce farm aid work from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. and tell us not to go to the market. I make a calculation myself to see if it is better to pay them 1,000 won and earn that much or more money at the market. If I am positive about earning as much or more money at the market, I don’t have to sweat digging the earth. I pay them and they eat their lunch with the money I paid them.”(Case 25)
“The community meeting is held four times a month. If I skip two sessions, I pay double the usual collection of 500 won for certain neighborhood activities. Sometimes, a certain amount of work is allotted to the neighborhood when many people are absent. Then we collectively hire persons to do the work on our behalf by paying them the money we had collected from those who were absent from the meetings…”(Case 30)
“During the busy farming season, people are hired as helpers, but wages are not paid instantly. Instead, they are paid 200 kilos of maize and 300 kilos of potato in autumn. I worked at my factory in winter and went to farms in summer. Because there is no work in the factory these days, we all go to farms and work there on the contract that they will pay us certain amounts of crops in spring or in autumn.”(Case 35)
An average 15 percent of factory workers seek farm work during rice planting in spring and harvesting in autumn. The most common as well as the most coveted marginal jobs are found at construction sites, where a day worker is paid 5,000 won a day (as of 2007).
2. Self-employed Business, Door-to-Door Vending, Smuggling
The 2003 measures prompted the development of various private commercial activities. The most common types have been self-employed businesses, door-to-door sales and smuggling across the Chinese border. People who had fund and started trading business with China early expanded their business by installing larger equipment and quickly increased their wealth. Gaps have grown ever wider between the rich and the poor. Eateries are the main type of self-employed business and they employ an increasing number of people privately. Venders supply consumer necessities to rural residents who are far from city markets. Goods are sold or exchanged for farm products. Small-time smuggling has been strongly targeted since 2006 but it still had a major presence in marginal work as of the end of 2007.
“At present (2007), the trend of free economy is rising in North Korea and people who cannot survive with the wages from their workplaces alone are gradually turning to self-employed businesses. In cities, there emerge various shops such as noodle mills, artificial meat factories, oil stores, and shops carrying machines from China.”(Case 34)
“In the past, there were makeshift eateries, but they have been replaced by full-fledged restaurants. They are everywhere, especially many near the marketplaces, railway stations and in main streets. Small places were able to serve only three to four people but a rich man in Musan built a house, where he lived and opened a restaurant employing about 10 people. Some big restaurants had professional male chefs and many young girls were working at such places, earning 5,000 won a day, a big money in North Korea.”(Case 35)
“Venders come to the countryside, give the country people clothes and receive corn. Corn prices are higher in cities, so profits are made. They have everything like the supermarket in the South. They carry everything on their back. Some come alone, some in pairs, or in groups.”(Case 31)
“Thirty out of 100 people were engaged in some kind of smuggling with backpacks in the past, but the number has fallen to below 5 percent. It is extremely difficult to cross the border because of the barbed-wire fence and guards. Since 2006, guards have been discharged whenever they are found to have received a bribe from smugglers, even just once. So the sentries demand bigger money because it is so risky.” (Case 35)
3. Sex Trade, Gambling, Narcotics Trafficking
The biggest worry of North Korean authorities in pushing a market economy has been a rise of such illegal and immoral activities as prostitution, gambling and narcotics trafficking. Sex trade increased for some time around entertainment and catering businesses but it has declined, at least on the surface, since a tough crackdown in 2007. Gambling also submerged after the stepped up control in 2005 and 2006, but drug trafficking has prospered because it is an important means of earning foreign exchange.
“In the old days, there was no such breed, but there are many now. The price is 5,000 won for a simple contact and 15,000 won for all night together. They are seen at parks and places where there are many people. Men who have a lot of money buy them, sing and play with instruments and then engage in the business of what they call ‘devoting the body and soul’ or ‘private boarding.’”(Case 35)
“Last year (2007), before I left, they closed such places. There were karaoke rooms in large hotels, but those compartments were removed first in Wonsan sometime in May. Women secretly and privately were doing the business at well-known restaurants and in any area. Since the rooms were destroyed, men are buying them less.”(Case 37)
“In the years 2003 and 2004, houses changed owners as a result of gambling. They gambled with cards and billiards. Whenever there was an inspection, several people were arrested from the neighborhood. Billiard halls were closed in 2005 and again in 2006 and by 2007, none was left intact. In big gambling, the betting rose to 10,000 won to 100,000 won. There were about 10 gamblers in Musan, including four big hands and two of them brothers. They were put into jail but they did it again after they were released. They not only feed their family with that business but they virtually control the whole Musan market.”(Case 35)
“Many still engage in drug trafficking. There were few drug addicts in North Korea in the past, but the number has grown now. Only bingdu (or philopon) is produced in North Korea and it’s a kind of stimulant. There are more bingdu addicts than habitual gamblers in North Korea. Also circulating are yellow pills from Japan, which costs 3,500 won or so apiece. Bingdu is produced in Hamhung and Pyongyang. As antique dealers lost money, they all moved over to drug trafficking. Narcotics are imported through government foreign exchange earning agencies. Japanese drugs are also imported through the same agencies. The state is encouraging drug trafficking, and it is to earn money for the operation of the party. North Korea has few products to sell so they sell opium and bingdu to earn foreign money. Those who brought in Japanese drugs sell them to North Korean people. Some drugs are brought into the country through the Chinese border but some come in through Chongjin and Hamhung. Drug users easily get the stuff in Chongjin, and Chongjin is where foreign trade agents are at work.”(Case 35)
Most narcotics traffickers were antique dealers during the “Arduous March” in the 1990s, when famine followed the death of North Korea’s founder Kim Il-sung. They shifted to drugs when antiques became unprofitable. Their business continues to prosper despite occasional investigations by the authorities because they are involved in foreign exchange earning operations, which are closely linked to the North Korean power elite.
4. Marginal Work and Everyday Life
Judging from the above narratives, the collapse of normal occupational labor and the expansion of marginal work characterize the basic frame of everyday labor in North Korea after 2003. Marginal work consists of various forms of supplementary jobs that are tolerated because they do not contradict North Korean social norms though they violate the North’s legal system, and deviant activities that are both illegal and socially intolerable.
In a country where economic and food crises continued for over 10 years and wages/rations are not normally released, occupations do not guarantee formal and regular work. The occupational labor structure in North Korea is being disintegrated and each person has to solve the problem of subsisting and surviving on their own. The development of a market system from the grassroots has resulted in unstable labor force on a massive scale. Classification of labor is meaningless in North Korea today. Except for the employees at military and major state enterprises, foreign trade agencies and the party and state organizations, the average workers’ rate of presence at their original workplace hovers around a mere 20 percent or so due to shortages of work. The remaining 80 percent are somewhere else, looking for marginal work to cover their basic living costs. State administrative agencies, party organizations and the armed forces show higher attendance rates. The military industries, the core heavy industries, foreign trade agencies, joint ventures with China and some collective farms also have better rates of worker attendance. Among farms, those located close to large cities or provided with better technologies and more effective distribution systems show higher worker attendance rates.
IV. Development of Labor Market and Division of Working Class
Expansion of marginal work in North Korea has led to the emergence of a labor market where labor is regarded as a commodity that can be transacted between the employer and the worker. This budding labor market is the key to understanding the everyday life of North Korean workers since the 2003 introduction of a general market system. A market is the place where equilibrium is established between the supply of and demand for goods and services and a labor market is where demand and supply meet over labor. But, unlike other commodities, labor cannot be separated from its provider, i.e., the worker, in the market. Individual behaviors are interfered by social systems in the labor market. Hence its development in North Korea bears great significance.
With the increase of day labor at households, construction sites and self-employed businesses, contract labor has emerged in commerce, construction and service industries as well as some types of tenant farming. At the same time, a sort of class diversification has been observed in North Korean society with the development of private labor contracts and the widening of income gaps within the working class. Eventually, social disintegration and loosening state discipline caused so much concern that Kim Jong-il, in March 2006, issued a ban on private employment of workers. The following is a report by the Research Institute for North Korean Society of Good Friends, a Seoul-based international humanitarian organization working for reconciliation between the two Koreas:
“On March 15, North Korean National Defense Commission Chairman Kim Jong-il handed down a set of measures. Among economic measures our attention is drawn to the article defining employment contracts between individuals as illegal. It refers to the practices of engineers and technical workers making money by offering their services to individual businesses without reporting to their original workplaces. Amid the continuing economic difficulties, private business activities have steadily increased with individuals making and selling their own products after installing some simple manufacturing equipment. They started on a purely individual basis, but there has recently been active division of labor among these businesses and certain kinds of labor relations have also emerged. Chairman Kim’s March 15 measures instructed the party organizations at various levels to work out countermeasures to prevent such practices. Accordingly, the party organizations are discussing ways to absorb those individuals who are conducting private economic activities into relevant industrial sectors.”
1. Development of Labor Market
The labor market development is irreversible when it has become a part of the operational mechanism of a society, unless the state provides all daily necessities. Strong government regulation may temporarily contract the market but subsequently spurs illegal employment, which will rapidly expand as soon as control is weakened. This is inevitable because the state cannot guarantee the livelihood of the working class and Kim Jong-il’s measures failed to show any remarkable effect. A former North Korean senior factory worker, who defected to the South in 2007, stated:
“Private employment began with the emerging of gaps between the haves and the have-nots. There were people who wanted to use the labor of others, and those who wanted to be employed by individuals rather than state enterprises. They try to evade working at the enterprises by all means and want to earn money at other places. In the official explanation of the measures, they argued with clear political overtones that private employment is not different from landlords using servants and capitalists hiring work hands. But workers are anxious to be privately employed and there are people who act as an intermediary between those foreign money earners and workers, although they are not quite like the employment centers here in the South.” (Case 34)
This description reveals the existence of “a go-between” in the labor market. They receive commissions from businessmen or even from employed workers. Hiring is brokered on an individual basis and without legal recognition. Job brokers are more active in the border areas where real estate transactions and construction projects are brisker than in Pyongyang and other inland regions. Personal connections and the staffs at state enterprises help in linking the employers and employees. Such private job placement service became a good source of extra income for members of state organizations who have broad social contacts.
In private employment, personal relations are essential for finding work opportunities although individual job skills and experiences are gaining importance as the labor market grows. With the effect of Kim Jong-il’s March 2006 edict fading out, weekly and monthly payment systems have expanded and teamwork developed, with members helping each other and sometimes living together.
“Restaurants hire two to three women, and many women also work as babysitters. Babysitting earns 5,000 won a day and payment is made on a weekly or monthly basis. They do not go to factories where they lose money because each one has to pay 10,000 won a month. Instead, they go to houses which undergo repairs, receiving 5,000 won a day. The owner doesn’t have to put up wanted posters, but as soon as he says he wants to repair his house, workers come in droves, some from their joint lodging places.”(Case 35)
2. Division of the Working Class
With the growth of marginal labor and social connections playing an important role in the labor market, the working class in North Korea has showed clear signs of division. The division in North Korea has been caused by a number of social and economic factors such as proximity to power, financial support from overseas relatives, personal adaptability in the market and individual productivity. The splitting of classes began to be exposed with the adoption of partial market system in the 2002-2003 period and the division was “complete” by the 2004-2005 period as revealed in the following statement:
“Classes of low, middle and high income became distinct in everyone’s status.” (Case 14)
“First, it is the level of property. House is the most important item and bicycles and electric home appliances are all regarded as property. Then you are assessed by how much you spend a month, where you go to spend your time, who you mingle with and what level of friends you have. Your job is also considered; chief of foreign trading firm who makes a lot of money is the top. If you know people in the military industry and law enforcement organizations, you are placed high, but not many are in the high class. Among 100 people, about 15 belong to the upper class, about 45 percent are in the middle class, and the remaining 40 percent in the lowest.”(Case 15)
“My neighborhood is a little poorer than others. We had about 10 percent in the upper class, 50 percent in the middle and 40 percent in the low class. The upper class consisted of those with security-related jobs like policemen, military officers, and some working for the electric power offices… they make hundreds of thousands of won when they repair a power transformer or something like that. Next are people in commercial work like me, or selling rice. The lowest are those selling ice, ramyeon instant noodles or buns, making very small profits like 10 won, or 1 won. They barely eat gruel at home.”(Case 25)
The “social capital” that accelerated division of the working class has affected the living standards of people in North Korea, depending on the individual power of networking and ability of using it. The most important are familial relationships or connections with powerful people created with bribes. People who have close relatives living in the United States or Japan are particularly well-off. Those who have families in China or even those whose relatives have defected to South Korea are also targets of envy as they are able to improve their financial condition by engaging in small businesses with money sent from outside the country.
Close relations with low-level officials can be particularly helpful because they exercise direct influence on people in the North’s authoritarian society. In this case, however, bribes are involved and the relations are not based on personal trust. Also useful are the ties with trading company staffs and members of the State Security Department. At the lowest level, collusive ties are established with guards at marketplaces through small amounts of bribes.
3. Realities Facing North Korean Workers
Marginal work in the labor market and the consequent division of the working class into different income groups constitute the realities of the life of North Korean workers. Against this backdrop, a movement toward capitalism is in progress at the bottom level as labor is sold and bought in a primitive labor market. In the labor market in North Korea in 2009, there are a number of factors that interfere with free competitions for smooth demand and supply. Because of legal and social obstacles, the labor market in North Korea is divided into different sectors and movements between them are very restricted, geographically in particular.
The working class in North Korea fully recognizes that money is the best means for their survival and social advancement. As the working class has been stratified in accordance with the scale of personal assets and the level of social networking, desires to move up to higher ladders are growing. With more information about the possibilities of change available, demands for reform and openness are growing stronger among North Korean workers. Socialist cohesion, which once characterized North Korea, is being splintered with the individuals’ utilization of their respective social capital as well as their different productivity that has instigated the division of classes in the society of workers.
V. Conclusion
Most notable in the realities of North Korean workers is the “illegal but socially tolerated” marginal labor. Excluding the employees of military industrial plants, members of core industrial facilities, armed forces personnel and the small percentage of workers reporting to work every day, more than 40 percent of the North Korean working population survives by engaging in marginal labor. Closer observation and more detailed study on their way of living are needed along with analyses on class divisions among North Korean workers. It is also important to note that legal violation and social deviation remarkably differentiate in North Korean labor activities but their conceptual division is quite flexible in terms of social tolerance. Even within major state organizations, illegal labor and marginal working are widely tolerated. Social judgment on some kinds of unorthodox work has rapidly changed in accordance with the shifting conditions of absolute and relative crises in the national economy.