From Violated Girl to Revolutionary Woman: The Politics of Sexual Difference from China to North Korea Suzy Kim A wistful young girl appears on stage singing of what could be, but her hopes are dashed by penury as she is sold into servitude. Both her parents meet tragic deaths, her fancé fees, and the girl is left to fend for herself at risk of prostitution and unplanned pregnancy. The story is a common refrain to illustrate the plight of destitute women throughout the world, as demonstrated by the continued popularity of such works as Les Misérables (1862), born as a French novel to become an international musical hit more than a century later. The basic contours of the plot are also replicated in two of the most popular cultural productions in North Korea and China with notable variations on the fate of the female protagonist, which offer fertile ground to explore how communist feminisms attempted to solve the “woman question” in ways comparable to and yet different from their sisters on the other side of the “iron curtain.” positions 28:3 doi 10.1215/10679847-8315166 Copyright 2020 by Duke University Press Downloaded from https://read.dukeupress.edu/positions/article-pdf/28/3/631/814363/0280631.pdf by suzykim@rutgers.edu on 23 July 2020