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On jobs good and badBy Andrei Lankov When you talk to North Koreans, you often hear the person you are talking to become deferential when talking about sales clerks or drivers. Such jobs are referred to in terms similar to the way the average Westerner would probably describe a doctor or lawyer. On the other hand, in North Korea medical doctors are considered to be run-of-the-mill white-collar occupations that do not carry any prestige and do not have good salaries.
Indeed, the hierarchy of jobs is very different in North Korea from that of the West (and South Korea).The idealist in me does not like to admit this sad fact, but we respect people who are well paid and respect less those who do not. In this regard, North Korea is no different to the West.
Party officials and police personnel occupy the top of the North Korean social pyramid. When you talk to parents, you often hear about their wish that their daughter marry a young clerk in the local party office or, if she is particularly lucky, to a secret police operative. These are dream jobs for many North Koreans because the people in these jobs enjoy high official standing and are paid very well. If one accounts for such people's opportunities to enjoy bribes, their jobs are even better paid.
However, North Korea is a quasi-feudal society that has a byzantine system of hereditary privileges and discriminations, as well as very little in the way of upward mobility. This means that the average North Korean is very much aware that most of the time only the children of secret police and party officials have a chance of becoming a party bureaucrat or interrogation specialists themselves.
Therefore, most have to look for more realistic careers for their children. By children I mean sons, since North Korea is a patriarchal society in which a woman's proper place is assumed to be in the home (rather than at a workplace).
For a man, the military service is considered to be somewhat attractive because it is considered to be the best way for the average man to get into the lower rungs of the party bureaucracy and a place at a university.
Alternatively, people seek jobs that do not require a college education but nonetheless martial a high salary. For men (and increasingly for women), working overseas is very lucrative. Since the late 1960s, North Korean workers have been sent overseas to do logging in Russian Siberia.
Many North Koreans are still working there, while others toil in construction sites in the Middle East and China. Women are often recruited to work as cooks, chefs and waitresses in the many North Korean restaurants operating outside the country. In publications critical of North Korea, these overseas workers are often described as "modern-day slaves."
Indeed, their salaries are usually quite low by the standards of the place they work, and they also face many restrictions in their individual freedom (virtually kept under house arrest in their dormitories). Nonetheless, these are some of the best paid regular jobs for North Koreans, and there is therefore a great deal of competition for the right to be selected for overseas work.
Domestically, another prestigious job is a car or truck driver. This job is strictly for men: only in exceptional circumstances are women issued driving licenses in North Korea. Working as a driver is lucrative because drivers can make money by using the great difference in prices between different parts of the country.
They could buy items cheaply in one place and then re-sell them at huge profits. Nowadays, price differentials are far lower than they used to be, but a job as a driver remains lucrative since drivers can use the vehicle under his control to move merchandise across the country (charging merchants good money for such services).
For women, a sales clerk seems to be a highly prestigious job. Sales clerks have access to goods and in many cases can resell such goods at prices many times the official level. Recently, the dramatic increase in the level of unofficial and semi-official market activities means that North Koreans can also aspire to become businessmen (or rather businesswomen, since women play the major role in the emerging North Korean market economy).
Many people are attracted to such opportunities, but such jobs continue to be viewed as insecure and stressful. Many still prefer a more old-fashioned career: a job overseas or a job in a local department store ― for those, who cannot aspire for a job in secret police, of course.
Professor Andrei Lankov was born in St. Petersburg, Russia, and teaches at Kookmin University in Seoul. You can reach him atanlankov@yahoo.com.
