This is true. My grandpa was a foreigner living in North Korea. He was arrested for having an afro. The crime? He was apparently "too fly for a white guy" under socialism.
Failure to display sufficient reverence for the country's leadership is considered a grave offence, punishable by fines, imprisonment, or even execution.
As such, all households are required to hang portraits of Kim incumbent, as well as former leaders Kim Jong Il and Kim Il Sung and ensure they are spotless.
My expectations are always low, but lol come on, this is Yeonmi Park shit. Three portraits hung in every home with no dust! Otherwise, summary execution!
Anyway, most of this is the classic cycling of old stories to make them look better-substantiated when every reference to X story comes from a given RFA report from an "anonymous informant".
The things that accuse Korea of is not that outlandish, especially if you are living in a place with a monarch. We don't need to go that many years back before it was commonplace for public spaces like hotels or community halls to hang portraits of the royals. People had that shit in their homes as well, like my great grandfather who had an honest to God equestrian statue of the king sitting on his desk.
The DailyMail article claims a number of myths about DPRK including that blue jeans are censored/banned, citizens are required to have government approved haircuts, women aren't allowed to wear shorts, dogs banned as pets. The article cites Radio Free Asia and DailyNK, both US government funded. Exactly what you would expect, US funded misinformation.
Since people are commenting on dogs, I found this article from KCNA, news website hosted by DPRK. This article was published October 27, 2023. The national dog breed of DPRK is Phungsan. The article says that it is common for people to raise Phungsan dogs at workplaces, villages, and houses.
Pyongyang, October 27 (KCNA) -- The interest in Phungsan dog is growing among the Korean people, and the number of people raising Phungsan dogs is increasing in different parts of the DPRK, to say nothing of the place of origin.
Sariwon City, North Hwanghae Province, in particular, is a well-known place in the country as the Phungsan dog show is held there every year. It is a common practice in Sariwon City to raise Phungsan dogs at workplaces, villages and houses.
The show is now under way in the city amid the interest of many fans and experts. This year's show is the tenth of its kind since the first show was held in 2014.
The Phungsan dog is loved by the Korean people as one of the national symbols reflecting the excellent character of the Korean nation, thanks to the noble patriotic intention of the respected Comrade Kim Jong Un.
The purebred Phungsan dog has been widely spread in Sariwon City and other parts of North Hwanghae Province with the show as an occasion.
According to examiners of the Phungsan dog show who are making tour of various places for the examination, the number of Phungsan dogs participating in the show is on the increase every year.
The dog, highly appreciated at the show, is used to propagate its species drawing the attention of many fans and experts.
Meanwhile, Sariwon Kye Ung Sang University of Agriculture is conducting a brisk research for preserving and propagating the purebred Phungsan dog
According to NK News, international kennel clubs consider Pungsan dogs as "little more than a local Spitz-type variant of Siberian huskies, only less physically impressive and with behavioral issues".
Shit like this is why every European country has like five or more recognized indigenous dog breeds, but other countries are lucky to have one even though dogs have been raised by basically every single human civilization.
I think that jeans actually are banned, though the rest is obviously false. At least, the tourist videos that generally said "all that stuff is a myth" usually reaffirm the jeans ban thing.
Uncritical support for jeans bans, the worst sort of pants. I don't think they actually are banned though, I think it's just the embargo so they have domestic pant-manufacturing industries.
Meanwhile see what happens when you live in a red state with long hair as a guy. Also fairly certain a lot of religious schools do have haircut requirements.
Ah, but that isn't the the state suppressing your freedom of expression. It's just individual bigots, which is just something we must live with lest we lose our freedumb and dumbocracy.
Lol, I remember when they invented this story years ago. The origin was literally a guy on Twitter seeing a picture from North Korea of one of those boards with different hairstyles at the barber that you can reference and just assuming that those were the only hairstyles that the government allowed.
That somehow generated multiple years of insane made up stories around hairstyles in North Korea, like there were stories claiming it was either forbidden or mandatory for men to get Kim Jong Un's signature cut, sometimes appearing in the same publication weeks apart.
For whatever reason they keep printing stories about North Korean haircuts, possibly becuase they are frivolous enough that they don't get any serious pushback despite how obviously absurd they are. Unlike other all-timer fake North Korea stories like nuclear testing creating zombies or their whole soccer team getting executed because they lost the World Cup.
Yesterday I read a story about Korean TV airing a British gardening show and blurring out the jeans the host was wearing. Allegedly the Korean government thinks jeans are imperialist.
The article I read went beyond the BBC story they got the story from and interviewed a western "expert" on Korea. She claimed that there is a death penalty in Korea for consuming unauthorized foreign media.
Sometimes I think the koreans are having a laugh trolling gullible westerners who are racist enough to believe everything.
The thing about debunking disinfo, people only have to wait somewhere between 2 weeks and 6 months and they'll pretend to forget it and start regurgitating it again. If you point out the past debunking to them they'll just call you a conspiracy theorist.
There's almost no point to debunking this shit for 90% of people who fall for it in the first place, they willfully believe it, because they want to, it makes them feel special.