Your Life as a North Korean Female Soldier
You are a North Korean female soldier. You are seventeen years old, standing at the very prime of your life. In North Korea, female soldiers are poetically called the flowers of the nation.
But these flowers are brutally crushed long before they ever get the chance to bloom. You are about to experience what life is truly like for a woman trapped within the North Korean military machine.
One cold morning, the neighborhood watch leader suddenly showed up at your door. She was the most feared woman on the block, and she carried a terrifying message for your mother.
“We need three girls from this district to volunteer for military service this year. Hand over your daughter.”
Your mother desperately shook her head. “My daughter is too young. I cannot send her away.”
The watch leader’s eyes immediately narrowed. “You know exactly what happens if you refuse, right? Your whole family’s loyalty rating takes a massive hit. You could lose your food rations.”
Your whole family. Your food rations. Those two severe threats shut your mother up instantly.
Here is the grim reality. Women are not technically required to serve in North Korea. On paper, it is all entirely voluntary. But the actual reality is completely different.
Every single neighborhood has a strict quota to fill, and someone has to fill it. It is always the daughter from the impoverished family.
The daughter with absolutely no political connections. The daughter whose parents cannot afford to pay a hefty bribe. Those are the girls who fill the numbers. And you are just one of those numbers.
At the military transport truck, your mother desperately grabbed your hand. Her bony fingers were trembling uncontrollably. “Please come back to me healthy,” she whispered.
You nodded silently and climbed aboard. About fifteen other girls your exact age were already sitting inside the dark vehicle. Some were openly crying, while others just stared blankly ahead.
You do not know it yet, but where this military truck is heading, the simple fact that you are a girl is about to be completely erased from existence.
The truck finally stopped. There was nothing outside but an open, desolate wasteland. A few run-down concrete buildings sat behind tall barbed wire fences.
This is the exact place where you will spend the next ten years of your youth. The very first thing they do is shave your head entirely.
The harsh metal clippers violently scraped across your bare scalp. Your hair used to be long and beautiful. Your mother used to gently brush it every single morning. Your friends always told you it was incredibly pretty.
Now it is rapidly falling to the cold dirt floor. Clump after heavy clump. The terrified girl sitting next to you started sobbing loudly.
The aggressive soldier holding the clippers suddenly smacked her hard across the back of the head. “You are crying! Soldiers do not cry! Shut your mouth right now!”
When the loud buzzing of the clippers finally stopped, you slowly looked at the trembling girl beside you. You could not tell anyone apart anymore.
Everyone suddenly had the exact same face. It was just a long row of nameless, identical girls with absolutely nothing left on their shaven heads.
Then came the standard issued uniforms. They were all exclusively in men’s sizes. Women’s uniforms simply do not exist in the North Korean military supply chain.
The oversized sleeves hung far past your fingertips. You had to physically roll the heavy pants up three separate times. The waist was so incredibly loose that you had to tightly tie it together with a rough piece of rope.
Underwear was absolutely not provided. A basic bra? That is considered an impossible luxury item. They put a seventeen-year-old girl inside a massive man’s uniform and forcefully told her she was a soldier now.
That evening, a strict senior female soldier gathered all the terrified new recruits together and delivered this chilling speech.
“From today onward, you do not have personal names. You only have assigned numbers. You are forty-seven. Number forty-seven. That is your new permanent identity.”
“The name Suny Young officially died today. And remember one crucial thing. Forget that you are a woman while you are in here.”
“The exact second you dare to say, ‘This is hard because I am a woman,’ or ‘I am in pain because I am a woman,’ your time here gets a whole lot worse.”
Four grueling months into your military service, something fundamental changed inside your body. Your monthly period completely stopped.
At first, you were absolutely terrified. Your period had been perfectly normal before you enlisted, and now it just mysteriously vanished.
But then you quietly looked around the barracks. You were certainly not the only one. Almost every single woman in your entire platoon had the exact same problem. Severe malnutrition.
One small bowl of watery corn porridge and two thin slices of salted radish a day. That is all you received for fourteen agonizing hours of hard physical labor.
Your starving body simply shut down all non-essential biological functions. And the very first thing a starving woman’s body gives up is her menstrual cycle.
But the absolute real nightmare was reserved for the unlucky few women whose periods actually did not stop. Sanitary pads? They completely do not exist in the military supply chain.
North Korea’s entire logistical system was built exclusively for men. There is absolutely no line item for feminine hygiene products. Period.
So, the desperate women simply improvised. Some quietly cut up old, dirty rags and folded them carefully. Some used torn pieces of worn-out socks.
One girl painstakingly layered rough corn husks together. Another desperately gathered dry leaves from the dirt. And some poor girls just let the dark blood soak straight through their uniform pants because they had absolutely nothing else to use.
Having your period certainly did not get you out of brutal daily training. There were absolutely no medical painkillers available for the agonizing cramps.
Even if the intense physical pain was literally tearing your body apart, you absolutely could not fall out of the strict military formation.
Your exhausted platoon mate, number nineteen, suddenly collapsed from severe menstrual cramps during a heavy work detail. A callous male officer slowly walked over to her.
“Male soldiers definitely do not have this pathetic problem. So exactly why are you in pain? Your mental discipline is incredibly weak. Stop faking it immediately and get up.”
Number nineteen desperately dragged her shaking body back to her feet and painfully picked up her heavy metal shovel once again. Her young face was as white as a ghost.
You went to the official military doctor exactly once. You nervously told him your period had completely stopped, that your hair was falling out in clumps, that your gums were constantly bleeding.
The doctor was an older man. The exact moment you cautiously mentioned the word period, he aggressively waved his hand at you like you were entirely wasting his valuable time.
“You are perfectly healthy. I am absolutely not giving you any medication whatsoever. You are a tough soldier. Deal with it.”
That brief dismissal was the only medical attention you ever received during your entire decade of military service.
Two exhausting years in, you finally started to truly understand something crucial. Female soldiers are not actually treated as soldiers. They are essentially captive servants.
One of your official daily duties was doing the male officers’ dirty laundry. Their heavy uniforms, their sweaty socks, and surprisingly, even their filthy underwear.
Imagine a nineteen-year-old girl painstakingly handwashing the soiled underwear of a thirty-something male officer in the dead of the freezing winter.
You were forcefully plunging your bare, freezing hands into freezing ice water just to furiously scrub a grown man’s dirty clothes. Your fragile skin painfully cracked and constantly bled.
But the very next morning, there was always another massive pile waiting for you. And that degrading labor was just the very beginning.
Cleaning the officers’ private quarters. Preparing the officers’ hot meals. Carefully polishing the officers’ heavy leather boots. All of this degrading work fell entirely on the exhausted women.
Officially, it was deceptively called mandatory character-building activities. Under that pleasant, harmless little label, you quietly cooked men’s food, meticulously washed men’s clothes, and thoroughly cleaned men’s rooms.
The exhausted women had a bitter, dark joke they constantly shared among themselves in the shadows. “We are not respected soldiers. We are just glorified housemaids.”
Everyone quietly laughed whenever they said it out loud. But behind that hollow laughter, there was absolutely nothing but profound sorrow.
And yet, all of this daily physical suffering was just the mere beginning. The absolute real hell truly started at night.
Sometime during your difficult second year, a fresh new batch of young female recruits finally arrived at the base. The older male officers instantly started sizing them up.
Not openly, of course. A lingering glance during the quiet meals. A piercing look during the morning roll call. Carefully checking their young faces. Carefully checking their developing bodies.
“Not bad at all. Very easy on the eyes. Decent body, too.”
The male officers casually said these disgusting things to each other. The female soldiers heard absolutely every single word, but nobody could ever say anything back.
The very first terrifying summons cleverly came disguised as a routine duty assignment.
“Number forty-seven. You are on mandatory overnight duty at the officer’s private quarters tonight. Report there directly at ten in the evening.”
You were the unlucky one randomly called. An older, senior female soldier suddenly grabbed your shaking arm. She forcefully pulled you into a dark, quiet corner of the cold barracks and urgently whispered.
“When they eventually call you inside, do not violently resist them. Just silently do exactly what they tell you to do.”
“What do you mean?” you asked in panic.
“You absolutely cannot say no. If you dare to say no, things will get a whole lot worse for you.”
You stared deeply into her tired eyes. There was absolutely no anger there. There was absolutely no sadness either. There was just pure, heavy resignation.
They were the completely defeated eyes of someone who had unfortunately been through this exact nightmare countless times before.
Ten o’clock at night. You nervously stood right in front of the officer’s dark quarters. Your entire young body was violently shaking. It was not just your rapid heart. It was absolutely everything.
You hesitantly knocked on the wooden door. “Come in,” a deep voice answered.
The heavy door slowly opened, and then it firmly closed right behind you. What horrific things happened inside that dark, isolated room is something that truly cannot be put into any words.
When you finally got back to the quiet barracks, you absolutely could not eat any food for several days. Your nervous stomach was so completely wrecked that nothing would ever stay down.
A concerned fellow recruit quietly asked you, “Are you okay?”
You completely could not find the strength to answer her. But the exact moment you slowly looked directly into her understanding eyes, you instantly knew the dark truth.
She had absolutely been through it, too. Everyone trapped here knew the terrible secret. Everyone had personally experienced it.
But absolutely nobody ever talked about it aloud, because talking would never actually change a single thing about their brutal reality.
A few silent months later, your fellow recruit Unju’s small belly noticeably started to show. She had unfortunately gotten pregnant right after being forcefully called to the officer’s dark quarters.
When the obvious pregnancy was eventually discovered by the superiors, the only person violently punished was Unju. The guilty male officer just carried on with his daily military duties like absolutely nothing happened.
The aggressive military investigator harshly asked Unju, “You intentionally seduced our honorable officer, didn’t you?”
Unju was aggressively dragged away to the distant military hospital. Forced, invasive surgery. Whether she was ever properly anesthetized or not, absolutely nobody truly knows.
A terrified fellow soldier who was forcefully taken along stated she could clearly hear Unju screaming in agony from inside the cold operating room.
And that exact same guilty male officer? He immediately started aggressively calling in the absolute newest batch of fresh female recruits.
Those poor young girls would inevitably go through the exact same horrific nightmare that Unju just tragically did.
Year three. You were suddenly mobilized for the massive military parade specifically celebrating Kim Jong-un’s birthday.
One grueling month of intense marching practice. Ten agonizing hours every single day. Absolute perfect physical synchronization, just like mindless machines. Not a single exhausted step out of line.
But there was a sudden massive problem. Your absent period had finally come back. Spring had fully arrived, and the miserable food situation improved just slightly.
It was barely enough for your starving body to slowly start physically recovering. And with that slight physical recovery, your natural biological cycle forcefully returned.
It was wildly irregular and completely unpredictable. The intense cramps aggressively hit your stomach like a sharp, twisting knife.
There were absolutely no medical painkillers. There were absolutely no sanitary products, obviously. But you absolutely could not break the strict marching formation.
You could not physically stop moving. You could not even verbally say you were in agonizing pain.
On the actual parade day, you marched completely flawlessly. Arms raised high. Legs perfectly straight. Loudly chanting patriotic slogans directly on command.
The pleased military officers sitting in the grandstand clapped and applauded loudly. You were smiling brightly purely because they strictly told you to smile.
The exact second the exhausting march finally ended, you completely collapsed to the hard ground. Your loyal fellow soldiers desperately carried your limp body back to the quiet barracks.
But there was absolutely nothing anyone could actually do to help you. And the psychological nightmare certainly did not end there.
Mandatory pregnancy tests. Once every single quarter, every single female soldier was forcefully tested.
You anxiously lined up in strict order by your assigned number. One by agonizing one, each terrified woman slowly went inside the clinic and then came back out.
The sheer suffocating fear while standing and waiting in that long line was truly unbearable.
The specific women who had unfortunately been previously called to the officer’s dark quarters always had terrified faces completely drained of all human color.
If the medical result ever came back positive, you were aggressively dragged away directly on the spot, exactly just like poor Unju was.
Your nerve-wracking turn finally came. Your racing heart felt exactly like it would physically explode inside your tight chest.
The final medical result. Negative.
You instantly let out a massively long, deep breath. But what heavily washed over your exhausted body was definitely not pure relief.
It was just absolute, hollow emptiness. Because you knew that next quarter, and the dreaded quarter right after that, you would definitely be standing right back in the exact same terrifying line again.
That is exactly when the darkest truth finally hit you. Even if you actually did somehow get pregnant, you would absolutely never be allowed to keep the innocent baby.
Time just agonizingly crawled by. Year five.
Walking slowly to a dusty construction site one sunny day, you casually picked up a sharply broken piece of dirty mirror from the rough ground.
It was just a tiny, sharp shard barely small enough to fit inside your calloused palm. Out of pure, innocent curiosity, you slowly held it up directly to your exhausted face.
Your breath completely stopped in your throat. Who is this? Who exactly is this unfamiliar person staring back?
Sharp cheekbones aggressively jutting out. Dry lips painfully cracked and constantly peeling. A dark, empty gap right where a white tooth used to be, now just a black hole.
Your skin was heavily darkened and ugly blotched completely beyond any personal recognition.
You were only twenty-two years old. How in the world is this the ruined face of a twenty-two-year-old girl?
The strange, aged woman trapped in that broken mirror was definitely not the bright Suny Young you softly remembered.
There was absolutely no trace left whatsoever of the hopeful, young girl who innocently climbed onto that military truck at age seventeen.
You slowly set the broken mirror down on the ground, and you firmly decided never to ever look at your own reflection ever again.
Late at night, the exhausted women quietly whispered to each other hidden under their thin, scratchy blankets.
“Do you honestly think I will ever be able to get properly married when I finally get out of here?”
“Who would ever actually want us looking exactly like this?”
“Will my missing period ever actually come back to normal?”
“Will I ever biologically be able to have beautiful children?”
“Would my own loving mother even be able to recognize me now?”
These are the incredibly tragic conversations of young girls who are barely in their early twenties.
They are not happily talking about young love. They are not excitedly talking about handsome boys or famous pop stars.
They are tragically wondering if their ruined, broken bodies are still actually functioning women’s bodies.
Year seven. One quiet night, you secretly and carefully tuned in to a banned South Korean radio broadcast.
A strange woman’s beautiful voice softly came through the heavy static, singing a gentle song. You completely could not make out the exact lyrics. You do not even remember the specific melody.
But that beautiful voice. It was incredibly soft. It was wonderfully warm. It was unmistakably, purely feminine.
You quietly sat directly in front of that small radio and just violently cried. At first, you completely did not even truly know why you were crying.
It was definitely not a sad, depressing song. It took a very long time before you finally understood the painful reason.
It was simply because you finally remembered. You were once a real woman, too. You once possessed a beautiful, gentle voice.
You once possessed joyful, innocent laughter. You once possessed long, beautiful hair. You once possessed a real human name.
And absolutely all of it was completely gone now.
Ten exhausting years agonizingly passed by. You are finally twenty-seven years old now. You are officially being discharged from your military service.
You slowly walked right out the main front gate of the massive military base. There was absolutely no celebratory send-off. There was absolutely no respectful handshake.
There was not a single, basic “thank you for your dedicated service.”
You finally took off your completely worn-out, heavy military uniform and put on an even more terribly worn-out, cheap set of ordinary civilian clothes.
Freedom. But true freedom definitely did not taste sweet at all.
You quietly went all the way back to your childhood home. Your elderly mother was thankfully still alive. But in those long ten years, her dark hair had gone completely, shockingly white.
When she finally saw you standing there, she immediately broke down, crying hysterically.
“My beautiful daughter, exactly how is this your ruined face?”
Even your very own loving mother could barely even recognize who you were.
You eventually started desperately selling cheap bean sprouts at the crowded local market just to barely survive. And that is exactly when you discovered something truly horrifying.
There is actually something much crueler in this world than the brutal military. It is society’s harsh, unforgiving judgment.
“That strange girl over there, she just recently came back from serving in the army.”
Do you actually know exactly what that loaded sentence truly means in North Korea?
When a man proudly comes home from his required military service, he honorably fulfilled his national duty. It is completely expected. Nobody ever says a single negative word about him.
But when a woman quietly comes home from her military service, the vicious, cruel whispers immediately start spreading everywhere.
“Who truly knows exactly what she did while she was in the army?”
“You absolutely know exactly how it is with those powerful male officers.”
“It is pretty incredibly obvious. Do you honestly think she is still pure and untouched? Forget entirely about it.”
You dedicated ten entire years of your precious youth to your beloved country. You dug massive, muddy trenches. You got brutally beaten.
You hopelessly starved almost to death. And you were violently dragged away into dark rooms in the absolute middle of the night.
You somehow miraculously survived absolutely all of it. And exactly what did you ever get in return for your sacrifice?
Not a shred of national recognition. Not a single ounce of human gratitude. You just received a permanent, highly toxic label.
Damaged goods. Absolutely no decent man will ever come actively looking for you now.
And those beautiful children you once innocently dreamed of eventually having? Your completely ruined, broken body can no longer ever make that beautiful dream happen.
This is the absolutely tragic, unspoken reality. This is the true life of a female soldier trapped in North Korea.
