Thetownend.com

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/4157121.stm



N Korea wages war on long hair
Men's hairstyles reflect their 'ideological spirit'

North Korea has launched an intensive media assault on its latest arch enemy - the wrong haircut.

A campaign exhorting men to get a proper short-back-and-sides has been aired by state-run Pyongyang television.

The series is entitled Let us trim our hair in accordance with Socialist lifestyle.

While the campaign has been carried out primarily on television, reports have appeared in North Korean press and radio, urging tidy hairstyles and proper attire.

It is the strongest media campaign against men's sloppy appearances mounted in the reclusive and impoverished Communist state in recent years.

The propaganda drive on grooming standards has gone a stage further than previous attempts. This time television identifies specific individuals deemed too shoddy.

Crew cut

Pyongyang television started the campaign last autumn with a five-part series in its regular TV Common Sense programme.
   
How the propaganda campaign looks on Pyongyang television

In pictures

Stressing hygiene and health, it showed various state-approved short hairstyles including the "flat-top crew cut," "middle hairstyle," "low hairstyle," and "high hairstyle" - variations from one to five centimetres in length.

The programme allowed men aged over 50 seven centimetres of upper hair to cover balding.

It stressed the "negative effects" of long hair on "human intelligence development", noting that long hair "consumes a great deal of nutrition" and could thus rob the brain of energy.

Men should get a haircut every 15 days, it recommended.

Named and shamed

A second, and unprecedented, TV series this winter showed hidden-camera style video of "long-haired" men in various locations throughout Pyongyang.
   
Hair is a very important issue that shows the people's cultural standards and mental and moral state
Minju Choson newspaper

In a break with North Korean TV's usual approach, the programme gave their names and addresses, and challenged the fashion victims directly over their appearance.

The North Korean media normally reserves the reporting of names of its citizens to exemplary individuals who show high communist virtues.

The series was shot at various public locations - on the street, at a sports stadium, a barbershop, a bus stop, a restaurant, a department store.

Some unruly-haired pedestrians or customers captured on camera "meanly ran away", the programme said, while others made excuses about being too busy to get a trim.

Television newsreels such as "Employees of Pyongyang Textile Plant keep their hairstyle and dressing neat and tidy" and "Hairdressers at Ch'anggwangwo'n manage men's hair according to the demands of the military-first era" have also aired.

What not to wear

State radio programmes such as "Dressing in accordance with our people's emotion and taste" link clothes and appearance with the wearer's "ideological and mental state".
   
People who wear other's style of dress and live in other's style will become fools and that nation will come to ruin
Nodong Sinmun newspaper

Tidy attire "is important in repelling the enemies' manoeuvres to infiltrate corrupt capitalist ideas and lifestyle and establishing the socialist lifestyle of the military-first era," the radio says.

Newspapers too highlight the civic advantages of short hair and smart shoes.

Hair is a "very important issue that shows the people's cultural standards and mental and moral state", argues Minju Choson, a government daily.

"No matter how good the clothes, if one does not wear tidy shoes, one's personality will be downgraded."

For party papers such as Nodong Sinmun, the struggle against foreign and anti-communist influence is being fought out in the arena of personal appearance.

"People who wear other's style of dress and live in other's style will become fools and that nation will come to ruin," it says.






Excellent title. Dont you just love weird places.

An interesting topic above. I was purely looking for an existing fred about "Places" and the TEF search function came up with this piece of forum gold.

Anyway, does anyone on here live in Andover? I've a friend who's wanting to visit, potentially stay around for a little while.

Be great if anyone on here lives there currently?

So presumably long and unruly pubes are also seen as anti-socialist and bad for the brain.

come the revolution, I'm starting with man buns on those over the age of 17

+1.

A bit of man bun envy from the follicly challenged?  :)

They do look a bit silly in most cases though.

My hair is about a month shy of its 5th anniversary of when it was last cut.

I can barely remember having hair it's been that long now. Guess I'd be ok in North Korea then..

envious of hair? a bit. I've a face for radio though so it's not that big a deal.

man bun envy? if rather have a comb over!

This, and TBH I much prefer shaving my head.

100%. Even if I could grow my hair long I wouldn't.

Me too JJ. Wish what little I have wouldn't grow as I do like a nice smooth bonse.

Every other day. Wet shaved

Absolutely mate, I shave every other day or it costs a fortune in blades as I cant electric shave it gives me a rash, I would love if all my hair fell out!

You should let it grow JJ.

https://youtu.be/yiJSP7EshL4

I can have a full head of hair if I wanted one but I still shave. My hair grows fast and thick which makes it hot and a massive pain in the arse.

The full shave progressed into a Mohican, but it's still good to have hair-free sides that help keep me cool.