In the United States, not much is known about the people of North Korea. But we can safely assume, like all humans around this globe, North Koreans are having sex. But when we in the West think about the infamously isolated and oppressed country, we typically focus so much on its politics, saber rattling and woeful record on human rights that we lose sight of the fact that its citizens are just people.
Some of the guys probably ejaculate too early. They do all the human stuff. When you go there and interact with them, they are shockingly normal, given that they are in the most abnormal country on earth. On a basic level, sex and love are universal truths.
But in a country dominated by a governmental hierarchy that seeps into every aspect of life—indeed into the thought processes of its citizens—politics will necessarily color human behaviors. Increasingly, however, according to observers of North Korea and first-person accounts of defectors, those behaviors are being influenced by the outside world.
Much of what is happening in North Korea today can be traced to one of the lowest points in its history. By the mids, the government could no longer rely on significant aid from the Soviet Union, and funding from China began to dry up as well. Around the same time, a horrific flood and an ensuing famine led to hundreds of thousands of deaths and years of starvation.
As a result, the tradition of unquestioning obeisance began to erode. I want food. I want my kids to have food. That exchange works both ways, with information about the outside world being smuggled in through foreign media and through defectors communicating back to their families, and information about North Korean culture reaching the outside world. After the famine, a black market emerged.
