48 To gain a sound and comprehensive understanding of the human rights situation of North Korean women, it is thus of foremost importance to consider simultaneously the social and economic conditions in which the everyday life of women is embedded as well as the resulting transformations in the structure of consciousness. More specifically, there is a need to grasp the ways in which North Korean women understand and negotiate the conditions of life as encountered by them. To this end, it is necessary to inquire, from a structural perspective, into the composition of continuity and change regarding the politico-economic system and socio-cultural conditions in North Korean society. This is important because the human rights situation experienced by women in their everyday lives cannot be entirely understood without considering the structural conditions that constrain and violate women’s human rights. Based on this problem awareness, the next sub-chapter focuses on four aspects relating to the structure of human rights violations against North Korean women. Firstly, we paid attention as to how the stabilization of refugee numbers correlates with the human rights environment in North Korea and how this environment of human rights violations is structuralized. Secondly, we examined the politico-economic governance in North Korea and tried to understand by what kind of reproductive mechanism the structure of human rights violations against women that derives from such governance operates. Thirdly, we explored how the social distribution mechanism in North Korea works and how it has been changing; we also looked at how women have been excluded, discriminated, and marginalized in its operation. Fourthly, we scrutinized the functioning of North Korean official discourse and ideology and the mundane logic of socio-cultural conventions, norms, and everyday life ethics in order to understand the structure which reproduces situations of human rights infringements that women are confronted with on a daily basis. 2. The structure of human rights violations against North Korean women