North Korea Has Reportedly Banned Tight Pants As Kim Jong-un Cracks Down On 'Indecent' Fashion

North Korea is banning residents from wearing tight pants, as part of a broader crackdown on foreign pop culture.

Kim Jong-un's regime has long railed against Western influences affecting its socialist way of life. The Supreme Leader has issued another fashion decree after increasing numbers of young people were spotted wearing skinny jeans.

AFP

The Socialist Patriotic Youth League, which is a state-run youth organisation, has launched a campaign stating that North Korean hair and clothing style is a vital element of socialist life, Seoul-based news outlet Daily NK reported.

In clear terms, the authorities are emphasizing that they will thoroughly crackdown on improper dress and hairstyles, labelling them 'anti-socialist and non-socialist behaviour'.

The Daily NK reported authorities are filming women stopped in the street for failing to follow government fashion regulations and using the footage in lectures about anti-state behaviour.

Representational Image/PhotoAlto

One video is believed to show several women in their 20s and 30s detained for wearing tight leggings and dying their hair.

The footage commentary describes the women as "capitalist delinquents" with "indecent clothes" and an "impure ideology."

Last year, North Korea has also placed a ban on leather trench coats because they claim it is disrespectful to copy Kim Jong-un's fashion style. The iconic look became popular in 2019 after the country's supreme leader wearing on TV donning the trench coat, Radio Free Asia reported.

However, the knock-off imitations of the trench coat have proliferated and authorities have now been deployed to shut down merchants selling them and take them off people amid fears it undermines the authority of Kim.

"Police say that wearing clothes designed to look like the Highest Dignity is an ¡®impure trend to challenge the authority of the Highest Dignity,' a source told Radio Free Asia.

KCNA/Reuters

"They instructed the public not to wear leather coats because it is part of the party¡¯s directive to decide who can wear them."

Leather jackets, as opposed to full-length trench coats, have actually been worn in North Korea since the early 2000s, popularised by illegally smuggled South Korean films which circulate in provincial cities.

A resident from the North Pyongan province explained that coats are both "imported from China" and "made domestically" with imported materials.

"Rich entrepreneurs are able to import the fabric for the coats by placing an order with state-run trading companies who have partially resumed maritime smuggling," they explained.

According to the South Korean newspaper Korea Joongang Daily, the average salary in the North is roughly 50p per month.

Fake leather coats cost North Korea cost roughly ?12 (Rs 1,200), and real leather ?25.50 (Rs 2,500).

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