Refugee Describes How South Korean Culture Has Infiltrated North Korea
A North Korean refugee recently gave a radio interview to PRI.org which focused on why North Koreans like South Korean clothes and beauty products as well as the importance of black markets in the country:
Would you wear skinny jeans if they were illegal? As it turns out, the answer is yes, at least for one young North Korean woman.
Listen to this story on PRI.org »
Danbi and I are browsing through a South Korean market, when she stops to admire a pair of slim fitting pants. “Girls just love these back home!” she declares. By home, she means a city in far-off North Korea.
She flips her hair dramatically, and laughs heartily, as she tries on a sparkly hair clip. She recalls, “We all wanted to be able to run our fingers through our hair like this. Like we saw in a South Korean TV show. But we couldn’t. Because we didn’t have enough shampoo in North Korea, so your fingers would just get stuck!”
Danbi is a 24-year-old North Korean refugee, who paints a picture of the totalitarian regime that’s quite different from the one we’re used to seeing, but an account supported by other defectors and those working with North Koreans. Yes, the country is rife with human rights abuses and grinding poverty. But Danbi, who took on her new name after fleeing, is from a city near the Chinese border — which has become surprisingly porous, and so she’s grown up in this presumably closed nation with a window to the outside world.
She says she shopped in black markets with smuggled foreign goods and watched American and South Korean TV shows, via smuggled USB sticks, since she was a kid. So by the time she entered junior high, Danbi says what she learned in school — that Americans can’t be trusted and South Koreans are poor — she doubted its truth. [Global Voices]
You can read the rest at the link.
“North Koreans like South Korean clothes and beauty products”
Those frames are but god ugly ❗ Notice they are minus the glass and weren’t mentioned in the article so they must be a North Korean thing as I’ve never seen a South Korean wear such goofy looking glasses. 😮
Dude, I saw the craap you had in your employer supplied apartment (before you were kicked out). Your fashion sense ain’t much to brag about.
Where were you during those two weeks you didn’t post? Doing a little time, until your bail bondsman came though?
Big Glasses has been a thing in Korea for at least three years…
She was into South Korean culture before it was cool… but you probably haven’t heard about it.
One thing is for sure… the North Korean army is far better than the South Korean army.
…vintage…
…very retro.
Just for the record I think she looks nice and I have seen many Koreans that wear the large glasses.
“Where were you during those two weeks you didn’t post?”
So, you missed me? You should ask your boy Gi Korea about that as I’d like to know as well but don’t expect much for he ain’t much on the answer front.
I suckered almost each and every one of you into thinking I haven’t seen this dorky look by S. Koreans in Seoul etc…Such FOOLS you are…DUH ❗ ❗ ❗
Oh boy, that Tbone sure is clever.
He toyally suckered me into thinking he is a dipshyt.
In fact, he is so clever, I STILL think he is a dipshyt.
Was he blocking your posts, Tbone?
Missed you? Don’t flatter yourself. Your lifestyle and multiple arrests here in Korea would have sooner than later landed you in jail. Considering your endless drug fuelled rants here, you getting tossed in the slammer Stateside is not exactly outside the realms of possibility.