The Rodong Sinmun encouraged women to bear and rear children in its June 23, 2022, edition. “Bearing lots of sons and daughters and raising them well is important for the future of our country and nation,” the ruling party organ said. (Rodong Sinmun-News1)
North Korea’s elite women are flaunting luxury fur coats worth millions of won—enough to buy a provincial home or feed a family for years—while ordinary workers struggle to afford rice, exposing the country’s widening class divide.
A source in North Pyongan province told Daily NK recently that women in powerful families that occupy the pinnacle of high society in Sinuiju often order mink coats launched by exclusive women’s fashion brands in China or expensive coats sold at emporiums specializing in fur products.
Most of the apparel ordered by these women goes for around 10,000 yuan ($1,400), an astronomical price in North Korea. Based on the current won-to-yuan exchange rate in local markets (around 4,800 North Korean won), a 10,000-yuan mink coat is worth the equivalent of two tons of rice. That would also be enough money to buy a decent house in areas outside of major cities, the source said.
A stark contrast: Luxury and hardship
The source added, however, that ordinary North Koreans have no way of knowing the price of a fur coat worn by these wealthy women and lack the fashion background to recognize such a coat even if they did know the price.
“The wife of a company manager in Sinuiju has not one but two high-ticket fur coats. She’s effectively walking around in four tons of rice,” the source said.
The source drew this comparison because the families of workers at that same company do not receive a grain of rice in rations and have to rely on an “8.3 arrangement” to make a living. Under an 8.3 agreement, workers pay a fee to their official employer to allow them to spend their time on better-paying unofficial work.
“Most of the workers at this company have to pay fees to their manager and are sent to a labor camp if they fall a few months behind. Yet the wife of that same manager is walking around in a coat that could basically feed all the company’s workers for a month. That’s an excellent illustration of the contradictions here,” the source said.
Deepening wealth gap
The rising demand for expensive fur coats among the wealthy and the growing volume of coats imported from China show that the class divide is growing, revealing the severity of the wealth gap and corruption inside North Korea.
“This shouldn’t be seen merely as a matter of conspicuous consumption. There are supposed to be restrictions on the consumption of these luxuries by officials and their wives, but the bizarre thing is that these behaviors are coming out into the open and basically becoming normalized,” the source said.
“You have to wonder how company employees would react if they learned that the coats worn by their managers’ wives are worth enough rice to feed a family for several years.”
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