Pent-up demand for South Korean music, films and TV dramas in North Korea is driving demand for unique clothing styles, a source reported to Daily NK on the 8th. Nowadays, the source said, self-employed seamstresses are keenly seeking South Korean fashion magazines in order to learn about the newest looks.
The source from South Pyongan Province explained, “There are more and more self-employed seamstresses getting copies of fashion magazines from South Chosun through local traders going back and forth to China. They take the magazines, make copies of the clothes they see in them, and then sell those clothes to people with money, like Party officials and rich families.”?
“We are not just talking about women, either,” the source added. “Men here always used to wear black or dark brown jackets and the ‘people’s uniform’ (known in the West as the ‘Mao jacket’), but recently they have started wearing nicely colored suits. I guess this has been going on since Korean culture got popular; young people are going to seamstresses to ask for certain styles they are seeing in the TV dramas.”
As recently as the beginning of the 2000s, “fashion” was a largely alien concept in North Korea. This was because clothing had always been produced according to an extremely limited set of designs by state-run factories using uninspiring raw materials, making it impossible for people to think about showing off their unique personalities through clothing.
By 2008, however, things had begun to change significantly, as was reported at the time by the official publication of the Chongryon (Association of North Korean Residents in Japan), Chosun Shinbo. In an article in March of that year, Chosun Shinbo discussed an unprecedented new trend: slim-fitting suits for younger working men. More recently, the same movement toward variety in style and color has gathered still more pace as external cultural influences continue to flow into the country.
The majority of the seamstresses producing the clothes are former employees of state-run clothing enterprises, according to defectors. Many of them will have been making clothes at home to order for a number of years, and in some cases the work has even expanded to the level of a small cottage industry.
The state of affairs was confirmed to Daily NK by a second source, a member of the overseas Chinese community who explained, “Sure, private seamstresses are asking me for South Korean fashion magazines so that they can learn more about South Korean styles. They are doing so in spite of attempts to control Hallyu-related things.”
