Chongjin, a woman caught in a fashion theft, fights her way out of a forced labor camp with a bribe.

In late March, a young woman from Chongjin was bribed to avoid being sent to a forced labor camp after she was caught by authorities wearing inappropriate clothing, Daily NK has learned.

As spring brings warmer weather and people opt for lighter styles of clothing, inspection teams affiliated with the Socialist Patriotic Youth League (below: “Youth League”) have begun roaming the streets of Chongjin and cracking down on youths they deem oddly dressed. Garment, a reporting partner in North Hamgyong province, told Daily NK on Monday that he would not be named due to security concerns.

North Korean officials have asked people to choose clothes and hairstyles that are consistent with the socialist lifestyle and use the Youth League to enforce proper dress. Those caught in the fashion raid are now being sent to forced labor camps for punishment, the reporter said.

In fact, the youth league in Chongjin recently held talks about fashion rules. According to the speeches, “some young people are completely in the bourgeois mentality and in Nonsense Avoid capitalist style and untidy clothes and strange hairstyles. The speeches said, “If this is the case, take note [they are caught dressed in this manner] The consequences are not limited to writing self-criticism; Instead, they face legal punishment.

At the end of March, a YA foreign league inspection team in Chongjin stopped a young woman in her twenties on the street and cited her as wearing tight, form-fitting clothes. The young woman refused to go to the camp after paying a 1,000 RMB (about $145) bribe while facing the penalty of forced labor.

“If he had been stopped by the youth league before, he could have solved the matter in a few pages of self-criticism. As the punishment was transferred to forced labor, the amount of bribes to be paid increased,” the reporter explained.

He added, “In the name of uprooting the bourgeois mentality, they are pushing people’s faces, but then let the criminals go if they pay bribes.” And this makes it difficult to say why they act on people in the first place.

It’s about crowding what young people wear. Nothing new. In North Korea, however, the government’s move to tighten punishments is aimed at countering ideological laxity among the country’s youth, which is seen as a threat to the regime.

Meanwhile, many young North Koreans are complaining about the government’s crackdown on clothing and increasing punishments, according to the report’s partner.

“Young people wonder if there is an ideology in the clothes they choose to wear. They are unhappy because they feel pressured to wear certain clothes to avoid being sent to a labor camp and cannot wear clothes they bought with their own money. All this has made many people wonder if there is another place where they can pay bribes to wear the clothes they want.

Translated by Rose Adams. Edited by Robert Lawler.

Daily NK works with a network of reporting partners based in North Korea. They remain anonymous due to security concerns. More information about Daily NK’s reporting partner network and data collection activities can be found on our FAQ page.

Please direct any comments or questions about this article to dailynkenglish@uni-media.net.

Read in Korean