62 Up to the 1990s, there was a strong tendency of women being used as work-machines, birth-machines, and childcare-machines obeying and conforming to the political and economic objectives of the state, i.e. women being instrumentalized for social mobilization and exploitation. The intention to perceive and utilize the female ‘body’ as a means to reproduce the patriarchal order of male domination and as an industrial production tool was particularly strong. The use of the female body as an industrial means in the 1950s-1960s, the semi-coercive pressure on women’s contraception as a means of birth and population control in the 1970s-1980s 28 , the promotion of childbirth after the mid-1990s to secure a new, future workforce substituting the existing workforce diminished through widespread starvation due to the famines, etc.; all these measures extensively instrumentalized the female body for social mobilization and exploitation, albeit under the cover of patriarchal ‘protection’. From this perspective, the legally stipulated equality and rights provisions appear as mere formalities concealing the shadows of mobilization and exploitation. On the other hand, it is important to ask whether this legal equality manifested itself in women’s daily life experiences and whether it has been inscribed into the individual’s identity and thus been internalized. This includes an experience-based assessment as to whether the laws and institutions provided by the state aimed, in practice, at ‘granting’ rights by making women safeguard their rights themselves or whether laws and institutions have made real efforts to protect women’s rights. Certainly, differences can be assumed to exist with regard to peoples’ awareness and evaluation of equality between men and women across time. However, our research found that, with regard to women’s experiences of the 1990s and the following decade, equality and rights granted by the state have, in practice, not been inscribed into women’s experiences or identity and are incongruous with their everyday life and reality. 28 From the early and mid-1970s onwards, a situation in which food production in North Korea could not match population growth started to develop. At that time, North Korea began to implement measures to curb childbirth. A crude contraceptive tool nicknamed ‘Gori’ (loop) was supplied to every regional and village health centre, and surgical procedures and educational measures took place. Infections and physical pain caused by the low-quality contraception device swiftly followed (Gim, Gyeongjin, 2009, 41; Yun Okhui, 2009, 4-2; An Mungil, 2009, 4-3; U Wonjae, 2009, 4-4). In North Korea, the prevention of conception was entirely passed onto women as their sole responsibility (cf. Hanawon Survey, item no. 34). This way, the female body can be said to have been continuously violated in North Korea by the extremely androcentric, patriarchal, hierarchical order in line with economic objectives and concepts.