The status of women in North Korea is a complicated question. Weighed down as they are by the contradictions of a self-declared "progressive" society, which sees women as equal partners in the revolution, and the traditionalism that still dominates life in the DPRK, their roles are as soldiers, workers, farmers, as well as mothers and housewives.

Jeon Young-sun, a professor at the Institute of the Humanities for Unification at Konkuk University in Seoul, has looked into the often mysterious lives of North Korean women through examining the country's culture and arts, in a new book entitled “Living as a Woman in North Korea” (북한에서 여자로 산다는 것).