What is the impression of North Korea? Some people may say it's militaristic, whereas others may say it's isolated from other countries. These ideas are considered as conventional wisdom, which people can misunderstand depending on topics. Suzy Kim's book Everyday Life in The North Korean Revolution 1945-1950, and Hazel Smith’s book Markets and Military Rule support or challenge conventional wisdom. However, ways to analysis North Korea are different between two authors. Suzy Kim explains North Korea by using words, whereas Hazel Smith use numbers to analyze North Korea. Seeing politics, economy, and society of North Korea from different two views of Suzy Kim and Hazel Smith is the good way of understanding how North Korean state has been built.
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Basically, Kim categorizes population and discusses about it in the case that she talks about society. For instance, she discusses about women in several chapters. In chapter 7, she quotes Kim Wonju’s autobiography and it says “In order to prevent the reoccurrence of women's days past, in order to never again subject my loving daughters, poor nieces and the many other daughters to suffering, women must be liberated from feudal oppression and contempt” (Kim, 228). Wonju’s expression asks North Korea to give women freedom and shows that women were trying to get involved into society to get equality. Therefore, Kim tries to see every population in society by using words from people in North Korea. Unlike Kim, Hazel Smith tries to see society in a broader scale. One of the topics that describes her tendency is work state. She gives the information that out of about 11,000,000 working people, approximately 7,000,000 are workers, 2,500,000 are farmer, 1,500,000 are officers (Smith, 172). When it comes to occupation, Suzy Kim describes specific people such as peasants or politicians in different chapters. However, Smith mostly tries to see whole structure of the society of North Korea. Even though she mentions about women, which is a specific topic, she always pays attention to whole structure and refers factual numbers; for example, women’s participation rate in workplaces as labor force is different depending on their ages and 16-19 years old women’s rate is 66 percent, 20-24 years old women’s one is 93, and 25-34 year old women’s rate is 87 percent (Smith, 178). Through her information, it is clear that most of women are forced to work as labors and they could not get official and professional occupations. Therefore, she makes clear what women’s position in society was like with
Basically, Kim categorizes population and discusses about it in the case that she talks about society. For instance, she discusses about women in several chapters. In chapter 7, she quotes Kim Wonju’s autobiography and it says “In order to prevent the reoccurrence of women's days past, in order to never again subject my loving daughters, poor nieces and the many other daughters to suffering, women must be liberated from feudal oppression and contempt” (Kim, 228). Wonju’s expression asks North Korea to give women freedom and shows that women were trying to get involved into society to get equality. Therefore, Kim tries to see every population in society by using words from people in North Korea. Unlike Kim, Hazel Smith tries to see society in a broader scale. One of the topics that describes her tendency is work state. She gives the information that out of about 11,000,000 working people, approximately 7,000,000 are workers, 2,500,000 are farmer, 1,500,000 are officers (Smith, 172). When it comes to occupation, Suzy Kim describes specific people such as peasants or politicians in different chapters. However, Smith mostly tries to see whole structure of the society of North Korea. Even though she mentions about women, which is a specific topic, she always pays attention to whole structure and refers factual numbers; for example, women’s participation rate in workplaces as labor force is different depending on their ages and 16-19 years old women’s rate is 66 percent, 20-24 years old women’s one is 93, and 25-34 year old women’s rate is 87 percent (Smith, 178). Through her information, it is clear that most of women are forced to work as labors and they could not get official and professional occupations. Therefore, she makes clear what women’s position in society was like with