After being caught wearing clothing deemed improper by the authorities in late March, a young woman in Chongjin paid a bribe to avoid being sent to a forced labor camp, Daily NK has learned.
As the spring brings warmer weather and people opt for lighter clothing styles, inspection teams affiliated with the Socialist Patriotic Youth League (below: “Youth League”) have begun roaming the streets of Chongjin and cracking down on young people they deem to be wearing unusual clothes, a reporting partner in North Hamgyong Province told Daily NK on Monday, speaking on condition of anonymity due to security concerns.
North Korean authorities demand that people choose clothing and hairstyles properly aligned with the socialist way of life and use the Youth League to enforce proper attire. Those caught in fashion crackdowns are now being sent to forced labor camps as punishment, the reporting partner said.
In fact, Youth Leagues throughout Chongjin recently conducted lectures about fashion rules. The lectures claimed that “some young people are completely immersed in bourgeois ideology and the frivolous capitalist style and go around sporting unrefined outfits and strange hairstyles.” The lectures also emphasized that young people should “bear in mind that if [they are caught dressed in this manner] the consequences will not be confined to writing self-criticisms; instead, they will face legal punishments.”
At the end of March, one Youth League inspection team in Chongjin stopped a young woman in her twenties on the street and cited her for wearing clingy, form-fitting clothing. Facing a punishment of forced labor, the young woman paid a bribe of RMB 1,000 (around USD 145) and avoided being sent to a camp.
“Before, if you were stopped by the Youth League, the issue could be resolved by writing a self-criticism of a few pages. With the upping of the punishment to forced labor, there has been an increase in the amount of bribes being paid out,” the reporting partner explained. “That’s because it costs more to buy your way out of one month’s forced labor.”
He added: “They are cracking down on people’s appearance in the name of uprooting bourgeois ideology, but then let offenders go if they pay a bribe. That makes it hard to tell why they are cracking down on people in the first place.”
Clamping down what young people wear is nothing new in North Korea, but the government’s move to intensify punishments is likely aimed at preventing what is considered a threat to the regime: ideological laxity among the country’s youth.
Meanwhile, many young North Koreans are expressing discontent toward the government’s crackdowns on clothing and the increase in the level of punishments, the reporting partner said.
“Young people wonder if there’s ideology in what they choose to wear. They feel undue pressure to wear certain types of clothes to avoid being sent to a labor camp and are unhappy because they can’t wear clothes they bought with their own money. All this has led to a lot of people to wonder if there is anywhere else in the world where you have to pay a bribe just to wear the clothes you want.”
Translated by Rose Adams. Edited by Robert Lauler.
Daily NK works with a network of reporting partners who live inside North Korea. Their identities remain anonymous due to security concerns. More information about Daily NK’s reporting partner network and information gathering activities can be found on our FAQ page here.
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