Mick Hartley

From the Daily NK:

North Korean officials in Nampo are forcing unmarried women over 28 into arranged marriages, declaring that remaining single is a “non-socialist act” that shirks patriotic duty.

A source in South Pyongan province told Daily NK recently that the party committee of Nampo “recently began arranging forced marriages of women over the age of 28, regarding the act of remaining unmarried despite reaching marriageable age a non-socialist phenomenon.”…

The city’s party committee stated that “marriage and childbirth are not private decisions but a question of patriotism, and refusing to marry appears to be a refusal to perform the role a woman should play for the fatherland.” They threatened to “make an organizational issue of people who don’t get married.”

This means young people who intentionally remain single, particularly young women, face political and social disadvantages.

Specifically, the city’s party committee reportedly pressured those refusing marriage by threatening to add their names to labor mobilization lists and classify them as volunteers for work in rural communities, mines, or long-term construction projects.

In response to the Nampo party committee’s policy, the district of Waudo has been arranging forced marriages of unmarried women over 28 since March 19.

Neighborhood watch unit heads and Socialist Patriotic Youth League officials in the district are arranging marriages after compiling lists of unmarried women over 28. Women who refuse are classified as eligible for labor mobilizations as “shirkers of their socialist duty.”