Abstract

This paper analyzed the writings of North Korean female defectors who experienced North Korea’s market economy, the Jangmadang. The period of extreme poverty in North Korea in the mid-1990s, known as the “March of Suffering, ” marked the beginning of a sanctioned market economy. Seol Song-ah, a North Korean defector and writer born in 1969, accumulated wealth in the Jangmadang during this time, becoming a wealthy North Korean “Donju.” After defecting and settling in South Korea, Seol Song- ah encountered feminism. She frames her process of becoming a Donju as a struggle against North Korea’s patriarchal society. This paper’s analysis of Seol Song-ah’s es- says and novels revealed a blend of feminist perception with a desire for power, with capital serving as the ultimate objective. The analysis focused on two main points: First, in Seol Song-ah’s writing, the desire for capital accumulation and patriarchal resistance are not separated. It takes on a hybrid of secular and spiritual growth narratives. Second, despite the author’s clear mention of feminist awareness, the novel ends with the heroine achieving patriarchal power that replaced men. This hybrid narrative and the emergence of female patriarchs suggest that patriarchy is not the sole target for critical feminism. Instead, the paper argues that a more critical feminist perspective should target the market system that creates hierarchies beneath the patriarchy. In the concluding section of this paper, it was described that the integration of a degrowth perspective, which fundamentally deconstructs the life conditions subordinated to the theory of economic development, with feminism is an inevitable necessity.