Kim Jong-un, in North Korea a new style ban: stop the leather coat

The list of prohibitions on personal style of North Korean citizens, compiled by Kim Jong-un in person, she just got a voice out: i leather coats. A list that, in recent years, has included clothing such as skinny jeans, considered an emblem of provocation and capitalism, but also all types of piercings and haircuts such as the mullet, too jaunty and gender fluid for the leader of the People’s Republic.

For each of these, however, the reason for the ban is that they symbolize progress – that is, freedom of expression – which is not tolerated in totalitarian North Korea. So what’s wrong with leather coats?

Although they have always been popular in the country since at least the early 2000s, the black leather trench variation is became popular with the masses when Kim Jong-un wore one on the occasion of a television appearance in 2019. Second Radio Free Asia, affluent citizens immediately bought genuine leather coats imported from China, before North Korean clothing manufacturers began marketing low-cost faux leather copies. This year, another television appearance by the leader, along with a selection of leather-clad officials, cemented and further accelerated the trend, “suggesting” it implicitly. also to the female population.

In fact, during the military parade at the 8th Party Congress, she appeared together with the President, with a similar coat, even sister Kim Yo-jong. Seeing, in the following months, that the leather outerwear had become so trendy, Kim Jong-un felt anything but flattered: the authorities now say that wearing clothes to resemble the leader is an “unclean action, for challenge the authority of the highest dignity “. Only the party, therefore, will be able to decide who is worthy to wear them, and the consequences of this ban have gone far beyond those who dare to wear a leather coat. In fact, the North Korean law enforcement agencies have also tracked down the companies who make them, seizing the products and stopping production. After the Meghan Markle effect, in England and around the world, we have witnessed the Kim Jong-un effect. It lasted very little, however.

Other stories of Vanity Fair that may interest you:

– Kim Jong-un, 10 things about the North Korean leader (although we don’t know if they are true)

– North Korea: we like them

– North Korea, Kim Jong-un bans teen sex