by Daniel Tudor
Many people preferred secondhand shoes, too. Because the new shoes available on the markets were often homemade by individual shoemakers and were of poor quality and wouldn’t last long, young people often preferred to wear imported secondhand shoes.
As for adult fashion, well, adults aspired to look elegant rather than cool. Among thirty- and forty-somethings, secondhand clothes from Japan were the most popular. They were not only of better quality, but also looked classier than the cheap, tacky clothes being made in China. The price of Japanese secondhand clothes was therefore double that of the Chinese secondhand clothes.
How about elderly people and fashion? In my opinion, older men in North Korea tend to dress in a classier way than older women. They refuse to wear bright colors or logos, instead preferring to dress in a way that meant they might be mistaken for a high-ranking official. Tailored clothes that look like the ones Kim Jong Il used to wear are expensive, but look so much better than ordinary clothes if they fit the owner well.
Funnily enough, some North Korean clothes were nevertheless popular. A few years before I left North Korea, so-called “general winter clothes” (padded jackets) became popular. Although made in North Korea, they were of a surprisingly good quality and expensive. While a one-kilogram bag of rice would cost 3,000 won, a made-in-North Korea general winter jacket would cost between 100,000 and 150,000 won. Unless you were a high-ranking official or a successful vendor with a big business, you simply couldn’t afford one.
I think that North Koreans are even more obsessed with fashion than South Koreans because the clothes they wear indicate their economic status. This notion is still found among North Korean refugees, with some of my refugee friends having bigger wardrobes than my friends who were born and raised in South Korea! That trend is especially prevalent among those who only recently left North Korea.
Funnily enough, some North Korean refugees are still trying to follow trends that have long gone out of fashion in the South, but are still popular back home. I guess old-fashioned trends bring back forgotten memories to us North Koreans in the South.
How do you make yourself pretty in North Korea?
DT: South Korea is a world leader in the production and consumption of cosmetics—for both women and men. In fact, South Korean men spend more on cosmetics than men from anywhere else in the world. This is due to the extremely competitive nature of life south of the border. North Koreans are, like anyone else, interested in looking good, but they have neither the wherewithal or inclination to take it as far as the South Koreans. Often, those who defect to the South feel huge pressure to raise their game…
Jae Young Kim:
In North Korea only people with time and money can really care about beauty. That’s why it isn’t the serious business it is in South Korea, where I live now. In my opinion, the North Korean standard of beauty isn’t therefore on the “outside;” instead, it’s on the “inside”—the beauty that allows a woman to take care of both her household and husband.
When I lived in North Korea there was a famous actress named Miran Oh who was extremely beautiful and very feminine. She was popular with girls who all wanted to be like her, and with guys, too (for obvious reasons). I think it’s fair to say that Miran Oh must have been the beauty standard for many North Korean women. But as I mentioned, the ability for a woman to be strong and maintain her livelihood is sometimes viewed as a more important form of beauty in North Korea.
When I was young, I wanted to be like my mother—a woman who even many of our neighbors admired. She was really good at housework, calm, and helped my father a lot. For me, she was a proud woman and the type of woman I most wanted to be like. But now I’m in South Korea I have to care more about external beauty, too, since that’s such an important part of being a woman here. That’s not to say that some of us didn’t think in the same way back in North Korea, though.
At one time, double eyelid surgery became very popular among girls in North Korea and even my mother suggested I get it done. But I was really scared about it! You see, there are no professional plastic surgery hospitals in North Korea. Often, you have to get these types of operation done at someone’s house. They aren’t the most hygienic of places for surgery, but nevertheless many women are on waiting lists to get these kinds of operations. It became so common that the government actually started regulating these types of places.
There are many, many regulations in North Korea on how a woman should look. You’re not meant to put your hair down, skinny pants are frowned upon, jeans aren’t allowed, and there are definitely no short pants. If you’re ever caught breaking these rules you’re forced to write a self-criticism report; or if you have long hair, risk having it cut short. Nevertheless, some girls turn a blind eye to these penalties, all in the name of beauty.
While it is a lot poorer than South Korea, just like everywhere in the world women in North Korea want to look pretty. But unlike other countries, there is a lot less foreign influence when it comes to beauty and fashion. Really, China is the only country that really has much influence over us.
Chinese fashions get into North Korea because of the strong trade between the two countries and the fact that we are able to legally watch some Chinese soap operas and movies. So we see what is popular in China through TV shows or through what people crossing the border are saying. The cosmetics and fashion choices of North Korean girls are therefore influenced by Chinese trends.
North Korean women care a lot about cosmetics and usually Chinese products are more popular than the North Korean ones (I personally always used the Chinese ones). Because my family had a better quality of life than many of our peers, they had the resources to care about my beauty. So from time to time they’d treat me—once, for example, my mother bought me an expensive Chinese cosmetic product for whitening the skin (we don’t like to tan like Americans!).
I think it is normal that women in both Koreas make an effort to look pretty, but I guess the main difference between the two countries is economic. That, combined with all that I mentioned above, is why there are such obvious differences in the standard of beauty between North and South.