Featured Image Credit: Alamy
Topics: World News, North Korea, Kim Jong-un
Shola Lee
North Korea is said to be cracking down on haircuts and trendy trousers.
Footage of women wearing 'capitalist' fashion is reportedly being used by the Socialist Patriotic Youth League to lecture people on the importance of people wearing their clothes and hair in the 'North Korean style'.
Authorities are said to be emphasising future crackdowns on 'anti-socialist and non-socialist behaviour,' which includes haircuts and trendy trousers.
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Most of the women in the films used for lectures wear tight trousers and have dyed hair, Daily NK reports.
In the video, they are called 'capitalist delinquents' and described as wearing 'indecent clothes'.
The lectures are said to reinforce a pretty strict, 'uniform' idea of fashion, which is 'directly connected to the future of the motherland'.
This, according to Daily NK, is a way of suppressing the progressive spirit of creative young people in the region.
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And it's not the first time in recent history that there's been a clothes crackdown in North Korea.
In another bizarre report regarding the secretive communist state, Kim Jong-un reportedly didn't want people trying to take his look. The look in question? Leather trench coats.
The dictator began wearing the style of coat in 2019, and it quickly became popular among wealthier citizens who could afford the leather imported from China.
However, the style was reproduced with cheaper, faux leather, which has opened it up to the wider population.
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A source from Pyongsong told Radio Free Asia that the coat is a ‘symbol of power': "During the military parade at the 8th Party Congress in January [2021], the Highest Dignity and all the high-ranking officials were shown wearing leather coats also. So now the leather coat has become a symbol for powerful women too."
The source continued: "As leather coats began to be recognized as a symbol of power, private clothing merchants asked trading company officials to import synthetic leather since September of this year."
However, the popularisation of the coats has led to a crackdown.
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Police were said to have been confiscating the coats, telling people it ‘[challenges] the authority’ of the Kim Jong-un.
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