FILE PHOTO: North Korean soldiers are seen in Sakju County, North Pyongan Province. (Daily NK)
For North Korean young people, a handwritten letter remains the chief means of expressing feelings of passion. Despite the growing adoption of mobile phones in the country, various restrictions on their usage are sustaining an analog approach to romance.
“Some people still don’t have mobile phones here. High school students and twenty-somethings without phones continue to share their hearts through the medium of letters,” a source in North Hamgyong province told Daily NK recently.
Confessing one’s feelings in a letter has become a ritual of sorts for young men and women about to enter the military.
“People promise to wait for the soldier to return from their service in a letter hidden among the soldier’s belongings. People express their feelings in a letter because they feel bashful about saying it in person,” the source said.
Fear of “morality police” mockery keeps romance on paper
Even North Koreans with mobile phones still commit professions of love to paper because of concerns about making a fool of themselves in street inspections of mobile phones and the text messages they contain.
“Young people are frequent targets of random mobile phone checks. They worry about the morality police coming across lovey-dovey text messages, which would not only be highly embarrassing but also open them up to mockery. So people generally don’t express their feelings over text messages,” the source said.
Young people who are planning to get married regard letters as a means of candid conversation, as evidenced by the following excerpt from a recent letter from an individual to their fiancé that the source shared with Daily NK:
“Some young people, when choosing their marriage partner, take into account the financial situation and social standing of their partner’s parents and weigh how well the match would aid their career. But for me, being allured by external factors—rather than internal qualities—to choose a spouse who does not meet one’s ideals doesn’t seem to represent a true understanding of love for young people of our generation. That’s a point I wanted to stress out of concern that such an unfortunate seed might take root in our relationship.”
“A letter is more than a piece of paper; it’s the most honest means of sharing one’s thoughts in a restricted environment. Some people say that exchanging letters is a pleasure reserved for the young, while singles express jealousy about not having anybody to correspond with,” the source said.
Given the threat of random phone searches and financial difficulties that often make mobile phones unaffordable, young North Koreans continue to engage in “analog romance,” writing handwritten letters to share feelings they would never dare to speak aloud.
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