[citation needed] Jon Halliday has argued that the political atmosphere is an example of the same patriarchal structure that feminist reforms intended to dissolve.

[5] In the Joseon Dynasty, women were expected to give birth to and rear male heirs to assure the continuation of the family line.

For example, female shamans were called on to cure illnesses by driving away evil spirits, to pray for rain during droughts, or to perform divination and fortune-telling.

[7] However, as Korea entered the Yi Dynasty, Confucian ideology was strongly adhered to by society and immensely affected the roles of men and women.

After the opening of Korea to foreign contact in the late 19th century, however, Christian missionaries established girls' schools, thus allowing young Korean females of any class to obtain a modern education.

They transcended limitations of the agricultural class by marrying urban professionals, participated in the burgeoning modern art and culture scene, and abandoned traditional Korean hanbok for Western attire.

The communist regime in North Korea granted women positions of importance and agency in their communities in its efforts to promote equality.

According to the government, “an inminban head should know how many chopsticks and how many spoons are in every household.”[12] The women also reported any suspicious activity to the police and conducted random checks.

These inminban leaders directly contributed to the communist cause and culture of surveillance, serving in roles of leadership alongside their male counterparts.

[17] The government counted on mothers to instill strong communist values in their children and support the regime at the most basic domestic level.

The bombings took a major toll on North Korea leaving "no more targets left to hit, which did not even happen in Vietnam".

This position would eventually be reversed; many North Korean escapees located in China assert that forced abortions and infanticide are common within the country.

Although the societal position of women may have changed since the Choson era, the deeply en-rooted Confucian culture is still visible in contemporary North Korean society.

[33] With the goal to continue raising positive statistics, women were being encouraged more and more to work towards achieving equal, if not greater, status as men had.

[35] The heavy emphasis on light industry aims to raise poor living standards and combat the widespread shortage of food and consumer goods.

[38] In addition, the Law on Nationalization of Essential Industries weakened the economic power of a patriarch by elimination of private property.

[27] In early 2015, the North Korean government decided to make military service mandatory for all women living inside the country's borders.

In 2003, in an annual Supreme People's Assembly, the government granted a small reprieve for members of the military, reducing the term for men from 13 to 10 years and for women from 10 to 7.

After the war, women were enrolled in the socialist economy in large numbers, and played a major role in the rebuilding of the country.

Although these numbers are difficult to come by in the iron-clad North Korea, researchers believe women are the breadwinners in 80–90 percent of homes.

Women across the country, empowered by their new money-making abilities, have become less obedient to their husbands and have started controlling a lot of the household decisions.

Scholars who survey North Korean defectors claim they have yet to interview a woman that hasn't experienced some sort of violence in the home.

Albeit with heavy obstacles, women are still leading the charge for civil disobedience, an unusual occurrence in North Korea.

These changes have resulted in women preferring to wait longer to get married and men being forced to accept their subordinate roles as husbands.

The official newspaper Pyongyang Times, in an August 1991 article, described the career of Kim Hwa Suk, a woman who had graduated from compulsory education (senior middle school), decided to work in the fields as a regular farmer in a cooperative located in the Pyongyang suburbs, and gradually rose to positions of responsibility as her talents and dedication became known.

Women do most if not all of the housework, including preparing a morning and evening meal, in addition to working outside the home; much of the responsibility of childrearing is in the hands of t'agaso (nurseries) and the school system.

[31] Different sex roles, moreover, are probably confirmed by the practice of separating boys and girls at both the elementary and higher middle-school levels.

Their significant involvement in social and political organizations helped to shape North Korean communism and spread the regime's socialist ideals.

Because women's agency has always been in the home (before and during the modern era), they have served as the main instillers of ideology in the North Korean population.

While this permanent place in the home might go against communist gender equality ideals, women's role in the historical development of the regime is nonetheless undeniable.