If you get a divorce in North Korea, you and your spouse will be sent to a labor camp for one to six months to atone for your “crimes,” residents in the country told Radio Free Asia.
Divorce is considered an anti-socialist act, and is generally frowned upon in Korea, a communist country where Confucian values still hold deep roots. Divorces require the consent of both spouses and the government to be processed.
It used to be that only the spouse filing the divorce was punished, even if they were being physically abused, residents said. But now, both spouses will face imprisonment once the divorce is finalized.
“I went to the Kimjongsuk County People’s Court ... where 12 people received divorce decrees,” a resident of the northern province of Ryanggang, who requested anonymity for personal safety, told RFA Korean. “Immediately after the verdict, they were transferred to the county labor training camp.”
The resident said that divorces have increased rapidly since 2020. With the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, the entire country was locked down and it was very difficult for most families to make a living. The poor economic conditions led to many marriages falling apart.
To stop married couples from splitting up during this turbulent time, the government began punishing divorcees.
“Until last year, when a couple divorced, only the person who first filed for divorce was sent to a labor training camp,” the resident said. “Starting this month, all divorced couples will be sent to labor training camps.”
Toward a more harmonious society
RFA reported in March 2023 that the country, reeling from the relatively high COVID-era divorce rate, had initiated an education campaign to prevent specifically women from getting divorces.
Lectures were given to members of the Socialist Women’s Union, the largest women’s organization in the country, under the theme ““Let’s thoroughly eliminate the phenomenon of divorce and build a harmonious family, the cell of society.”
The campaign also tried other deterrents, including publicly shaming the parents of divorcees, and officials of companies responsible for high divorce rates among the workforce.
Despite the campaign, divorces have not significantly decreased, and now the government is reacting even more punitively.
For example, if an official were to get a divorce, it is grounds for expulsion from the Korean Workers' Party and a loss of all its associated perks, such as access to better education, housing and jobs, the resident said.
“My brother also divorced after three years of marriage,” she said. “His wife first submitted a divorce application to the court and received a divorce ruling. She was sent to labor camp for six months, while he has to do one month.”
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A divorced woman who had just finished three months of labor camp in South Pyongan province told RFA that women receive harsher sentences for divorce than men.
“There are about 80 women, and 40 men imprisoned in the county labor training camp,” she said. “About 30 men and women were imprisoned due to divorce decrees, and the women’s sentences were longer.”
She said that divorced people are most commonly in their 30s, followed by people in their 40s, and the usual reason for divorce is a husbands' violence against their wives caused by martial conflict from financial difficulties.
That abuse causes the wives to more often be the ones filing for divorce, so they are punished more, she explained.
Special considerations are given to women with young children -- they have to commute to and from the camp every day, but can return to take care of their little ones at night, she said.
“If the authorities continue to try to control the divorce rate by imprisoning people in labor training camps instead of solving the fundamental problem of making a living, the number of young people giving up on marriage will increase,” she said.
Among people who escape from North Korea to resettle in the South, those divorce rates are high, the South Korean Ministry of Unification reported. Out of 2,432 escapees surveyed, 28.7% of the women and 15.2% of the men were divorced.
The divorce rate in South Korea as a whole in 2024 is 1.8 divorces per 1,000 inhabitants.
Accurate data on the divorce rate in North Korea is not readily available, but in 2008, the last time the country conducted a nationwide census, only .3% of the population were classified as “separated.”
Translated by Claire S. Lee. Edited by Eugene Whong and Malcolm Foster.