All N. Korean men required to get Kim's hairstyle.


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Men in North Korea are now required to get the same haircut as their leader Kim Jong-un, it is reported.

 

The state-sanctioned guidelines were introduced in the capital Pyongyang about two weeks ago, media reports say. It is now being rolled out across the country - although some people have reservations about getting the look.

 

"Our leader's haircut is very particular, if you will," one source tells Radio Free Asia. "It doesn't always go with everyone since everyone has different face and head shapes."

 

Meanwhile, a North Korean now living in China says the look is actually unpopular at home because people think it resembles Chinese smugglers. "Until the mid-2000s, we called it the 'Chinese smuggler haircut'," the Korea Times reports.

 

BBC News article

 

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How much validity can we attribute to anything reported about NK?  I mean, we're on the receiving end of as much propaganda as they are, and from their perspective if they ever saw our "news" I'm sure they'd question it.

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www.wantchinatimes.com/news-subclass-cnt.aspx?cid=1103&MainCatID=11&id=20130223000071

 

 

It's not just nuclear weapons proliferating on the Korean peninsula these days. In a move that for once is not considered a threat to regional and global security, the North Korean government has recommended a relatively generous range of 28 hairstyles for its citizens, claiming that they are "the most comfortable" styles and capable of warding off the corrupting effects of capitalism, according to ifeng.com, a news website run by Hong Kong's Phoenix TV network.

 

Pictures can be seen on the walls of hair salons around the country showing the approved styles for men and women. Spiky hair is forbidden, as are quiffs ? the nation has learned the baleful lesson from the decadent South that outrageous hairstyles may lead to the formation of effete boy bands or to pervasive mental health problems whereby people take to riding invisible horses. Under no circumstances should you enter a North Korean barber shop and ask for your hair to be cut "Gangnam Style."

 

The list of 18 acceptable female hairstyles show North Korean women are given more choice in their coiffeur after they wed. Approved styles for single women are simple but married women are permitted to indulge in a few extra stylistic flourishes. This also has the useful effect of establishing whether a woman is married or not at a glance. If you like it, then you should have put some curlers in it, to paraphrase Beyonce.

 

Men are somewhat more restricted, with only ten styles to choose from and a longer list of rules to follow. The hair of the country's young men should be less than 5 cm long and they should have a haircut once every 15 days as longer hair apparently takes away nutrition from their brains. Older men, whose brains are presumably in decline anyway, are allowed to rock out with hair as long as 7 cm.

 

Ri Chun-hee, the news anchor for the country's Korean Central Television who is known for being patriotic to the point of hysteria, changed her hairstyle twice within two weeks in 2011, sparking speculation as to what the changes signified. She was seen with a bang perm and hair tugged behind her ears in March 2011 before she switched back to the most common hairstyle for TV anchors in the country ? side bangs and short layered hair covering her ears slightly ? less than 14 days later, according to ifeng.

 

The hairstyle changes have been interpreted as suggesting that Pyongyang is trying to improve its image since the state broadcaster is considered the front gate of the country. Others speculate that the changes were made because the country's young leader Kim Jong-un disliked the previous styles.

 

Perhaps a touch unfairly, it appears from the list that North Korean men are not allowed to emulate the preferred hairdo of the country's new leader. Kim himself has most recently been seen sporting longer hair on top with a center parting and his head completely shaved at the sides, a style popular in the West among teenage fans of bands such as Pearl Jam and the Lemonheads in the early 1990s.

 

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it is Hitler's haircut

 

No it's not, at all!?  It's nothing like Hitler's side parting

 

longer hair on top with a center parting and his head completely shaved at the sides, a style popular in the West among teenage fans of bands such as Pearl Jam and the Lemonheads in the early 1990s

 

Nope!

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 if they ever saw our "news" I'm sure they'd question it.

 

I sure hope they'd question it.

 

Our "news" is full of crap and lies.

If you are bald and cannot have the same hairstyle, you will be executed...

 

Nobody is bald in NK.

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The hair of the country's young men should be less than 5 cm long and they should have a haircut once every 15 days as longer hair apparently takes away nutrition from their brains

 

Looking at many great thinkers and scientists of the past century, this is the biggest lump of excrement I've heard. If they said it looks more professional I'd be a bit more understanding.

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> Meanwhile, a North Korean now living in China says the look is actually unpopular at home because people think it resembles Chinese smugglers. "Until the mid-2000s, we called it the 'Chinese smuggler haircut'," the Korea Times reports.

 

Not in public he didn't.  You don't get to make derogatory comments about the Dear Leader's haircut and live to tell the tale.

 

Or maybe that's why he's now living in China.

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> Meanwhile, a North Korean now living in China says the look is actually unpopular at home because people think it resembles Chinese smugglers. "Until the mid-2000s, we called it the 'Chinese smuggler haircut'," the Korea Times reports.

 

Not in public he didn't.  You don't get to make derogatory comments about the Dear Leader's haircut and live to tell the tale.

 

Or maybe that's why he's now living in China.

 

This Kim Jong Un wasn't leader then, i'm sure he was fair game as long as you worshiped Kim Jong Il 

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http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/03/27/mandatory-kim-jong-un-hai_0_n_5041289.html

 

Mandatory Kim Jong Un Haircuts For North Koreans Are No More Than An Unfounded Rumor

TOKYO (AP) ? North Korean leader Kim Jong Un's distinctive hairstyle is the 'do of the day on the Internet, thanks to a viral report that every male university student in the capital is now under orders to get a buzz just like it. But it appears the barbers of Pyongyang aren't exactly sharpening their scissors.

 

Recent visitors to the country say they've seen no evidence of any mass haircutting. North Korea watchers smell another imaginative but uncorroborated rumor.

 

The thinly sourced reports say an order went out a few weeks ago for university students to buzz cut the sides of their heads just like Kim. Washington, D.C.-based Radio Free Asia cited unnamed sources as saying an unwritten directive from somewhere within the ruling Workers' Party went out early this month, causing consternation among students who didn't think the new 'do would suit them.

 

"I was there just a few days ago, and no sign of that," said Simon Cockerell of Koryo Tours, which specializes in bringing foreign tourists to North Korea. "It's definitely not true."

 

An AP journalist in Pyongyang also said he had not seen any recent changes in hairstyles among college students in the capital.

 

Wide interest in the reports reflect the fascination the outside world has had with the unique hairstyles of both Kim Jong Un and his father, the late Kim Jong Il, who had a one-of-a-kind bouffant.

 

Though the forced grooming story may be one of many reported oddities about North Korea life that turn out to be false, it is true that the government has its own "fashion police."

 

Choe Cheong-ha, a defector who left North Korea in 2004, said members of a government-run youth organization routinely check for people who are not dressed appropriately. He said they look for whether people are wearing the mandatory lapel pins with the images of former leaders Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il, or for violations such as blue jeans, clothes with English words or above-the-knee dresses.

 

But Choe said directives on hairstyles weren't much of an issue, since most people voluntarily keep their hair neat and conservatively styled.

 

In 2005, however, the government waged war against men with long hair, calling them unhygienic anti-socialist fools and directing them to wear their hair "socialist style." It derided shabbily coifed men as "blind followers of bourgeois lifestyle." The country's state-run Central TV even identified violators by name and address, exposing them to jeers from other citizens.

 

The hair campaign, dubbed "Let's trim our hair according to socialist lifestyle," required that hair be kept no longer than 5 centimeters (2 inches). Older men received a small exemption to allow comb-overs.

 

The campaign claimed long hair hampers brain activity by taking oxygen away from nerves in the head. It didn't explain why women were allowed to grow long hair.

With women's hair, too, there have been misperceptions.

 

Photos of suggested hairstyles posted outside women's hair salons ? the kind allow a customer to show her hairdresser what she wants ? are regularly depicted by foreign media as showing the only sanctioned styles North Korean women can choose from.

 

Not true. But don't tell that to the Internet.

___

Associated Press writer Hyung-jin Kim in Seoul, South Korea, contributed to this report.

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