The North Korean media is reporting a new way for people to conserve energy during prolonged periods of economic hardship and hunger.
The state TV network has reported that body hair sucks up valuable food, and that long hair actually "consumes a great deal of nutrition."
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The importance of good grooming. . .
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The broadcast offered no scientific evidence to back up the claim, but there’s evidence aplenty of the government’s determination to cut off at the roots what has been an alarming trend to imitate hairstyles imported from across the Yalu and Tumen Rivers in China –- or even from Korean-Japanese business people visiting Pyongyang.
The TV broadcasts appear part of well-orchestrated campaign that reflects a much deeper concern — that foreign influence is spreading among the capital's elite as a result of foreign embassies and non-governmental organizations.
In programming that resembles police videos and reality shows on Western TV, Pyongyang TV has been showing images of people with long hair as captured on hidden cameras.
There was no doubt that those unlucky enough to fall in the camera’s eye were definitely having a bad hair day. For some, the issue may well be whether the barber’s razor will cut off unruly hair, or unruly heads.
No one, pressed for why he failed to get a haircut "in accordance with socialist lifestyle," was prepared to make a fashion statement. The most common answer was lack of time. Others were caught on camera walking hastily away from confrontation with the inquiring reporter.
It is unclear whether the campaign is aimed at specific members of the elite or was another sign of the divisions among factions and families, including that of "Dear Leader" Kim Jong-Il.
Under the circumstances, the video might have been billed as the North Korean version of lifestyles of the rich and famous.
The fact that the Pyongyang media opened the campaign amid reports of a power struggle swirling around Kim Jong-Il fueled suspicions as Rodong Sinmun, the party newspaper, reported signs of the type of decadence that the regime is pledged to combat.
The consequences of such bad habits in grooming and dress, said the paper, could bring a nation "to ruin."
The paper did not say if North Korea specifically was on the brink of ruin, but advised those "who wear other’s style of dress and live in other’s styles will become fools."
Pyongyang Radio echoed the theme. A neat and well-groomed appearance, said one commentary, "is important in repelling the enemies’ maneuvers to infiltrate corrupt capitalist ideas and lifestyle."
