A/HRC/25/CRP.1 hierarchies. However, songbun now appears to be only one factor that figures into the calculus of access to services or opportunities in a changing society where corruption has seeped into almost every facet of life.338 2. Discrimination against women 300. The DPRK acceded to the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) on February 27, 2001. In its first report to the CEDAW Committee in 2005, it reported: In the course of a number of social revolution and development for more than half a century up to now, the content of and the guarantees for sex equality have ceaselessly been developed and enriched. Equality between men and women has been realized in such a degree that the word “discrimination against women” sounds unfamiliar to people now. Sex equality being not confined by simple equality, the policies and legislation of the state reflect the concept of attaching more importance to women, and their enforcement is now a natural ethical obligation and a life tone of the whole society going beyond the limit of legal obligation.339 301. Korean society is deeply embedded with Confucian values.340 Traditional Confucian ideology ties a women’s ‘virtue’ to how well she obeys her father in her youth, her husband in marriage and her son upon her husband’s death. Pursuant to Confucian ideals, a woman’s marriage was arranged for her, and upon marriage she became part of her husband’s family and an outsider to her own.341 302. Kim Il-sung is reported to have commended women’s participation in the liberation movement, noting that “the women were completely on an equal footing with men; they all received revolutionary assignments suited to their abilities and aptitudes and carried them out”.342 However, women’s participation in the independence movement did not affect their status in post-liberation society. 303. The DPRK commenced on a progressive sex equality platform. Kim Il-sung sought to improve equality between the sexes through the implementation of the Law on Sex Equality, announced on 30 July 1946. This law emphasized equal rights in all spheres, free marriage and divorce, and equal rights to inherit property and to share property in the case of divorce. It prohibited arranged marriages, polygamy, concubinage, the buying and selling of women, prostitution, and the professional entertainer system.343 338 According to Transparency International’s 2013 Corruption Perceptions Index, the DPRK along with Afghanistan and Somalia were the worst performers, scoring just 8 points each and tying for last place at 175th. A country or territory’s score indicates the perceived level of public sector corruption on a scale of 0 - 100, where 0 means that a country is perceived as highly corrupt and 100 means it is perceived as very clean. A country's rank indicates its position relative to the other countries and territories included in the index. 339 CEDAW/C/PRK/1, para. 72. 340 See section III. 341 Park Kyung-ae, “Women and Social Change in South and North Korea: Marxist and Liberal Perspectives”, Women and International Development, Working Paper No. 231, Michigan State University, June 1992, p. 2. 342 Yu Eui-young, Kim Il Sung Works (Pyongyang, Foreign Language Publishing House, 1980), p. 185 as cited in Park Kyung-ae, “Women and Social Change in South and North Korea: Marxist and Liberal Perspectives”, p. 2. 343 Park Kyung-ae, “Women and Revolution in North Korea”, Pacific Affairs, vol. 65, No. 4 (Winter 1992), p. 533. 85