Kim Jong-un Is Making North Korean Men Get His Crazy Haircut

According to a report in the BBC this morning, North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has introduced a state-sanctioned guideline to the capital Pyongyang that requires all male university students to get the same haircut that he has.

Which, for the record, is this haircut:

Haircuts have been state-approved in North Korea for a while, but until now men had 10 styles to choose from. (Women have 18.) Still, a short back and sides has always been the favoured cut, with the state-run TV channel in Pyongyang launching a campaign in 2005 called, and I’m not kidding about this, ‘Let us trim our hair in accordance with Socialist lifestyle‘.

According to reports, not everyone is happy with the new laws. “It doesn’t always go with everyone since everyone has different face and head shapes,” one source was quoted as saying.

According to other reports, not everyone believes it. The Washington Times have drawn attention to the unreliability of the source that the news can be tracked back to, and quotes a bunch of people who actually have been to North Korea and not noticed any changes in hairstyles. “Over the past year, we had unbelievable stories about Kim Jong Un executing his ex-girlfriend for making sex tapes, and having his uncle eaten by dogs,” writes journalist Adam Taylor. “These stories are hard to confirm or deny, but there’s a lot of reason to believe they are not true – the latter story appears to have been based on satire, for example …

“Given the number of credible reports that detail the horrors of the North Korean life,” he continues, “the trivialization of the country’s regime is unhelpful at best, and dangerous at worst.”

So I guess I have just been slapped on the wrist.

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