(PatriotSpotlight.org) – A pair of blue jeans was conspicuously obscured when a British gardening program aired on North Korean official television on Monday.
British television host Alan Titchmarsh wears jeans and kneels in a garden bed to care for plants in a “Garden Secrets” episode on BBC television.
Korean Central Television (KCTV) blurred his legs during Monday’s transmission of the show in an attempt by the regime to limit popular Western fashion and culture.
Former North Korean leader Kim Jong Il essentially declared that jeans are absolutely forbidden and that North Koreans should not wear them under any circumstances. North Korea expert Peter Ward claims the prohibition on blue jeans dates back to the early 1990s.
Nevertheless, he said that it’s peculiar for North Korea to censor foreigners on TV for wearing jeans, considering that the government has always let visitors don almost any Western style.
Kim Jong Un, leader of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK), has blamed bourgeois culture and anti-socialist actions as tools used by capitalist nations to destabilize North Korea, prompting a tightening of restrictions on cultural influences from outside.
In 2022, a ROK media outlet cited unidentified sources in the DPRK, saying the government was targeting the increasingly popular skinny jeans and jeans with rips in South Korea.
Although jeans are illegal in North Korea, the country did make designer jeans in 2009 and sent them to a Swedish department shop. The retailer allegedly withdrew the pants off shelves to avoid controversy.
To transmit “Garden Secrets,” KCTV cuts the hour-long programs to fifteen minutes, uses a Korean narrator instead of Titchmarsh, and adds instrumental music from North Korea to the soundtrack.
Tight limitations on free speech, free travel, and access to information have kept North Korea relatively isolated from the rest of the globe for decades.
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