This paper aims to examine North Korean gender roles and changes in women in the process of the social transition under the military-first politics and the economic crisis after the mid 1990s―focusing on gender roles by the military regime and the women’s behaviours/minds as well as their economic activities as the major source of the peoples’survival basing on family and changes of the society from below. The main contents of each chapter are as follows: prior studies and survey method as a qualitative study, gender roles in the military-first era, warriors for survival doing family’s support and societies’ maintaining, strong viability and effect of private property, changing of the traditional gender role and consciousness, and then market economy and woman in conclusion. According to this study, women awareness of gender roles and the hierarchical order, constituted by the political authority, have begun to be reconstituted by the economic activity and change of their mind/behaviour. The change in women’s ideas and behaviours often cause a crack in the hierarchical order between men and women in North Korea. Meanwhile, they are rapidly merchandising. In particular, the “sex business”/human trafficking of women have been on the increase. Therefore, North Korean militarist system and market economy from below provides women with both the light and the darkness in the process of the social transition under the military-first politics and the economic crisis after the mid 1990s.