Recreational Chemistry, That's the Game Plan

Are your parents giving you a hard time about your new choice of hairstyle? Relax, it could be worse. At least it is not the government. In a new level of bizarre programs from those folks in Pyongyang, here is the North Korean response to shaggy haired hippies.

N Korea wages war on long hair

North Korea has launched an intensive media assault on its latest arch enemy - the wrong haircut. A campaign exhorting men to get a proper short-back-and-sides has been aired by state-run Pyongyang television.The series is entitled Let us trim our hair in accordance with Socialist lifestyle. While the campaign has been carried out primarily on television, reports have appeared in North Korean press and radio, urging tidy hairstyles and proper attire.It is the strongest media campaign against men's sloppy appearances mounted in the reclusive and impoverished Communist state in recent years. The propaganda drive on grooming standards has gone a stage further than previous attempts. This time television identifies specific individuals deemed too shoddy.

A second, and unprecedented, TV series this winter showed hidden-camera style video of "long-haired" men in various locations throughout Pyongyang. In a break with North Korean TV's usual approach, the programme gave their names and addresses, and challenged the fashion victims directly over their appearance.