culture

Women who give birth to many children and bring them up excellently are given prominence and great benefits in the DPRK.

Policies have long been in place in the country to provide prolific mothers with good living conditions.

According to an official of the Hwasong District People’s Committee in Pyongyang, dwelling houses are preferentially allocated to families with many children according to a state measure, and hundreds of such families moved into new flats on Rimhung Street which was completed last year.

Since several years ago, a prolific mother’s medical treatment ticket has been issued to women who bring up three or more children, which enables the women and their families to receive medical services on a preferential basis.

The families that have three or more children including adopted ones are also regarded as multi-child families, and they enjoy many preferential treatments.

Women who raise three or more children at and under the age of senior middle school are given a leave on demand and children in the multi-child families are recommended to vocational schools preferentially. Mothers of these families receive a special subsidy newly set by the state until their last child graduates from senior middle school.

Moreover, women with three or more children receive state benefits when they reach the age of retirement, irrespective of the length of their service, and those with two or more children who worked for more than 15 years also enjoy such benefits after retirement.

Though it is a natural obligation of women to give birth to many children and bring them up well, the state confers the title of Labour Hero and other high-level state commendations on them and honours them with the Communist Mother Honour Prize.

This is unimaginable for women in other societies who sometimes lose their jobs just because they want to have a child and become a mother.