Experts said that normalizing a man in the kitchen could change perceptions, but society remains patriarchal.
By Jamin Anderson for RFA Korean
In a scene from a North Korean TV show, a man wears a floral apron and serves a meal to his family. Analysts told Radio Free Asia that this striking reversal in gender roles could be a propaganda effort to get the people to accept North Korean leader Kim Jong Un’s daughter Ju Ae as his successor.
But the analysts noted that North Korea is still a society with rigid gender roles and warned against interpreting the scene in a way that suggests that authorities are using media to promote equality for the average North Korean woman.
Video of the scene went viral among Korean speaking users on the social media platform X as part of a larger discussion that speculated North Korea would begin slowly rolling back gender inequality and expanding women’s rights to prepare for Ju Ae’s ascension. The first post in the discussion was viewed 4.3 million times.
Though North Korea has made no official announcement regarding a successor, South Korea’s spy agency told lawmakers Sept. 1 that Kim Ju Ae appears to have reached the “designated successor” stage.
One user in the online conversation said that North Korean TV shows were already preparing the people by showing working moms and dads preparing meals.
Another user posted the video of a scene – from the show “A New Spring in the Plains of Baekhak” – that shows the aproned man with a tray full of food, entering the room from the kitchen. His wife thanks him for his effort and assists him with untying the apron strings as he places the food on the table. This post was viewed 2.4 million times.
When asked if TV shows could be part of preliminary work to establish Kim Ju Ae’s succession, Yoshihiro Makino, a foreign affairs specialist for Japan’s Asahi Shimbun newspaper and a visiting professor at Hiroshima University, told RFA that it was possible.
“In North Korea, TV is not entertainment but an important means of political propaganda,” he said. But this would be “a measure solely for Kim Ju Ae,” not for an ordinary woman.
Connecting the scene to succession plans might be a bit of a stretch, because scenes showing men cooking or serving food to the family are not totally new, Rachel Minyoung Lee, a senior researcher at the Washington-based Stimson Center, who analyzes North Korean state media, told RFA.
“North Korean TV has started showing such scenes since at least the mid-2010s,” she said. “We tend to link them to succession these days because of Kim Ju Ae … I think it would be premature to jump to link this to succession.”
Whether the scene is an effort by authorities to normalize men participating more in domestic chores is unknown, but even if it is, very few North Koreans would be swayed, Kim Su Kyong, a North Korean escapee from the northeastern coastal port city of Chongjin, who now resides in Virginia, told RFA.
“Just because a man sets the table in a drama, there is no way residents will be moved by it or their perception will change toward men helping with housework,” she said.
The patriarchy still exists
North Koreans might resist Kim Ju Ae as the ruler of the country because male chauvinism permeates every aspect of society, said Kim the escapee.
“If Kim Jong Un’s daughter were to take on the role … they would really hate it,” she said. “Inside, they would be truly annoyed, but they would have to hold it in because they would be afraid that people watching will snitch on them, and they’d be punished.”
The North Korean leadership does have women in prominent roles, but these women were usually born into privilege, said Lee.
Kim Jong Un’s sister Kim Yo Jong, who was at one time widely considered to be next in line, is currently director of the ruling Korean Workers’ Party’s General Affairs Department. Meanwhile North Korea’s female foreign minister, Choe Son Hui, is the daughter of a former North Korean premier.
“These are people… who have special status right?” said Lee. “And just because you see some of these high-level females playing a role, an important role in the North Korean leadership system, I don’t think that automatically translates into a higher status for North Korean women at large.”
Lee added that even among the privileged class, men still have an overwhelming advantage. “If you look at the overall North Korean leadership chart, where you have all of the high-level North Korean officials laid out. They’re mostly men.”
The status of ordinary women remains very low, Makino said. “According to those who have visited North Korea, many women work in hospitals and schools, but only men hold positions of responsibility.”
Over the years, the relative economic power of women has increased due to the emergence of North Korea’s nascent market economy, the Seoul-based Korea Institute for National Unification said in its 2025 North Korean Human Rights White Paper. But the study noted women still were not equal in politics and the public sphere.
Messaging from North Korean authorities regarding gender equality has also been somewhat contradictory.
On the occasion of the 80th anniversary of national founder Kim Il Sung’s July 30, 1946 decree on gender equality, the state-run Rodong Sinmun newspaper ran a story proclaiming that North Korean women have participated in the revolution with equal rights alongside men for 80 years.
But two weeks earlier, the founder’s grandson, the current leader Kim Jong Un met with newly elected leaders of the Socialist Women’s Union, where he emphasized the role of women as nurturing mothers.
“Women must become true patriots who genuinely contribute to the flourishing prosperity of the motherland, communist mothers who raise their children well, and communist educators,” he said.
The mixture between North Korea’s male-dominated culture and political ideology is responsible for the contradiction, said Lee.
“Culturally, they’re very conservative and patriarchal,” she said. “But …ideology wise because they claim themselves to be a socialist state, they’ve always emphasized gender equality.”
Edited by Noh Jung Min in Korean and Eugene Whong in English.
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