Opinion

July 30 is the 77th anniversary of the promulgation of the Law on Sex Equality.

Before the liberation of Korea in 1945, the Korean women had to suffer feudal discrimination and maltreatment along with the miserable fate of the colonial stateless nation.

President Kim Il Sung put an end to the history of their miserable fate.

Already in the days of the anti-Japanese armed struggle, he set it as the task of the emancipation of women to ensure equal rights of men and women, to raise the social status of women and to respect the personality of women.

After achieving the historic cause of national liberation, he saw to it that the Law on Sex Equality was promulgated on July 30 1946.

The nine-article law stipulates that women have equal rights with men in all domains of political, economic and cultural life, equal rights to elect and to be elected with men in the elections to power organs at all levels and rights to social insurance and education.

Under this law, Korean women are still enjoying the same rights as men in all fields of political life, working life, education, cultural life and family life.

Political rights are the most important of the rights enjoyed by the women in the DPRK.

They have the same social status as men and exercise the right to elect and to be elected. They take an active part in the society as deputies to the Supreme People’s Assembly, heroines, doctors, people’s athletes and senior officials in charge of major sectors of the country.

After graduating from school, they can either go to university or be provided with stable jobs and working conditions by the state according to their wishes and talents and are paid wages on a par with those of men for the same work.

With women leaving remarkable traces in the course of development of the state and society, such women officials as the chairwoman of the Phyongsong City People’s Committee, the workshop manageress of the Pyongyang Kim Jong Suk Textile Mill, the manageress of the Manpho Spinning Mill and headmistress of Kyongsang Kindergarten who trained many music prodigies, and a keeper who has worked in the Central Zoo since her girlhood, sportswomen and women scientists who demonstrated the country’s dignity, spirit and might to the whole world and the women who gave birth to many children and raised them up excellently became heroes, PhDs, merited keeper and people’s athletes in the last ten years alone. 

The Korean women enjoy meticulous and generous benefits from the state, including the maternity leave system and the social policy of taking care of families with many children.

As they are leading a worthwhile life enjoying public love and respect as gardeners, patriots and women revolutionaries who tend their families and society, the Korean women boundlessly love the socialist country, which is their destiny, future and life, and devote their all to the prosperity of the country.