In America, we as Bros have it really easy when it comes to hairstyles. We’ve got the freedom to rock whatever we want. Manbuns, the Bieber, the Trump, the Jared Leto…I could go on for days about the myriad of options we have and the fine democracy that protects them. Alas, in some parts of the world, people aren’t as lucky us as.
In North Korea for instance, all 11.9 million men inhabiting the nation will now be telling their barbers and stylists “Yeah, I guess I’ll stay with ‘the Un’ again,” and they’ll be doing it because North Korean “Supreme Leader” aka dictator aka craziest person on the fucking planet Kim Jong-un just made it the goddamn law!
A source in Pyongyang last week said authorities have issued an order requiring men to keep their hair no longer than 2 cm, while women are required to keep their hair bobbed. “University student monitors are walking around with scissors and cutting off the hair of offenders,” the source said.
Young men have been told to model their hairstyle on North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, whose eccentric hairdo is known in the North as the “ambitious” style, where the sides and back of the head are almost clean shaven and only the top is left.
HAHAHAHAHA so you’re telling me this is the bastion of North Korean style and if you don’t abide your teachers are charged with making you abide and/or probably having you killed!?
Because that’s pretty damn tragic. And you know that Kim Jong-un will probably start offing bald dudes because he’s a total diva like that. Like, “Nope, I don’t care that you physically can’t grow the hair that is mandated to be styled like the felt-tip pen atop my head. Your sentence is death, no ifs, ands, buts, or Rogaine about it.” Completely ruthless.
Obviously, this new reform sweeping North Korea (which also commands women to wear their hair in a bobbed cut like Kim’s wife Ri Sol-ju because WTF) aims to even further distance the pseudo-communist state from Western culture.
Another North Korea source says barber shops in Pyongyang are crowded by people hastily trying to comply, and the profession is seeing a boom because it is considered lucrative.
“Since last year, North Koreans have been ordered to crack down on capitalist ideology and culture,” a think-tank researcher here said. “The crackdown on long hair seems aimed at getting young people in shape for the seventh general assembly of the Workers Party.”
I see you artificially inflating that employment rate doing #dictatorthings, Kim Jong-un you crazy bastard. Man, it’s a great day to not be living in North Korea.
[h/t GQ]