Actually, the chances are that no such decree has been issued; what is reported about North Korea's news media is scarcely more reliable than what is reported on them. For example, rumours earlier this year that North Korean news outlets were reporting the successful landing of one of their countrymen on the Sun were, probably, untrue. However, in the matter of hair, the North Korean leadership has form, having in 2005 issued an illustrated guide to the 28 officially sanctioned haircuts (18 for women, 10 for men), and it seems there was recently a TV campaign against long hair, under the slogan 'Let us trim our hair in accordance with the Socialist lifestyle'. Let us indeed. Me, I'm torn between the ideologically rigorous Kim Jong-Un cut and the more relaxed (but only slightly less weird) Ed Milliband.
Seeing Kim, as we seem to almost every day, I'm reminded of my own abattoir as a kid in Coventry where, for 3/6d the sadists at "Dan's" turned out a reasonable facsimile of this 'style', uninvited. The white starched tabards were a cunning disguise; these men, probably ex-squaddies who had somehow survived the war, seemed to take delight in asking their 'victims' the usual question - 'How would you like it?', and then starting the process of what they felt would be most suitable (quick). And the Kim-Kut was the result. Warts and skin-tags brought a gleam to their eyes as the blood flowed, and the 'syptic pencil' came out to stem the flow. And, of course, the tired old question 'something for the week-end?' was trotted out, as if a thirteen-year-old would know what to do with such a thing, sex being something you read about in Reveille, if you could get your clammy hands on a copy. I didn't think about it at the time, but grey, post-war Coventry must have looked rather like present day North Korea.
ReplyDeleteLord yes, one of the regular ordeals of boyhood past - no wonder we couldn't wait to grow (a) up and (b) our hair.
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