In May, in one of those news stories that seems both unbelievable and too tempting to ignore, there was an uproar in numerous Western newspapers over the alleged news that Kim Jong-un, the autocratic ruler of Korea of the North, had issued an official edict banning ripped or tight denim pants.

Though it turned out to be a hyperbolic version of outdated news, three female defectors living in South Korea said the idea that the jeans symbolize some kind of rebellion for a different future for North Korean citizens is not true. as crazy as it might seem.

“When I lived in North Korea, I never had the freedom to wear what I wanted, but I never questioned it because I didn't know that freedom existed,” says Jihyun Kang, 31, who grew up in Chongjin, the third city largest in North Korea.

Kang first glimpsed that freedom when she was vacationing on Mount Paektu and saw a foreigner: “I was convinced he was homeless because in North Korea only beggars wore torn clothes. But my father told me that it was expensive for foreigners to visit North Korea and assumed that the jeans were ripped as a way of styling."

It was the first time in her life that Kang reflected on that word – “style” – and the questions led her to ask broader questions about her identity and the meaning of personal liberation that ultimately led her to decide to leave your country.

She's not the only one. Kang Nara, a 23-year-old social media star, and Yoon Miso, a 32-year-old image consultant, left North Korea for South Korea, crediting fashion with their path to freedom. Now they try to help others understand how powerful the outfit can be.

Although little information is available about the fashion industry in North Korea, styles in the country vary significantly from province to province and from social class to social class. In Pyongyang, for example, the heavily policed ​​capital where the elite live, fashion looks very different from its expression in the rest of the country, where an estimated 60 percent live in absolute poverty.

North Korean citizens once received rations of clothing from the state — uniform-like two-piece suits in a few solid colors — but when the economy collapsed in the mid-1990s, people developed their own system of clothing. local markets, and since then there is a greater variety of options.

Initially, market vendors offered what they could grow, cook or sew at home, but by 2017, there were 440 official markets supplied mostly with Chinese imports, including food, household items and clothing.

There is also an active black market, with items such as makeup, USB sticks that store foreign content, and also "forbidden clothing." Defectors say that true fashionistas know private sellers and buy the riskier items at home.

Laws and punishments in North Korea aren't public, so it's unclear what clothing and accessories are illegal. Instead, there are directives banning “items representing capitalist ideas,” noted in the Rodong Sinmun, the country's state-run newspaper.

Organizations like the Patriotic Socialist Youth League have long interpreted this to include miniskirts, shirts with English phrases, and various types of jeans, and have controlled the people along those lines.

For decades, those who dared to dress out of the norm faced public shame or jail if caught. Kang recalls, for example, a time when she had to beg a patrol officer to get her out of a public humiliation session after she was found wearing white jean pants (she got it). “If I wanted to wear something, like jeans, I had to do it on the sly. I would take back streets, or hide if I saw a patrol car approaching."

Yoon, who is from Hyesan, got her first pair of denim pants – blue in color and flared style – from a private seller when she was 14 years old. “One day, I combined the jeans with a brightly colored blouse and I was hooked,” she recalls. An official from the Socialist Patriotic Youth League cut her pants in a humiliation session, made her apologize publicly and notified her school, where she was lectured about the dangers of “bourgeois and capitalist ideas”.

In 2009, at the age of 20, Yoon left for China and lived there for two years before moving to South Korea in 2011. “For me, fashion is freedom, and I left North Korea because I wanted to wear what that I wanted”.

Learning to dress again

The South Korean Ministry of Unification estimates that 34,000 North Koreans have crossed the border since 1998. Defectors, who face prison terms or worse if caught , they usually leave through southern China, go through Laos and then Thailand before arriving in South Korea.

Some bring a small change of clothes from North Korea, or pick up items in China. In the end, they enter South Korea more or less empty handed.

After their arrival, defectors spend up to three months under investigation by South Korea's National Intelligence Service while living in an isolated building in the mountains. If approved, they move to a settlement support center called Hanawon, where they are taught banking, technology and business fundamentals.

Part of that education often includes a trip to a department store, where Hanawon students are given money to buy. Although North Korea has a handful of department stores that sell Western brands to the wealthiest 1 percent of the population, the Hanawon package tour is a new experience for most defectors.

Kang Nara, who lost all his clothing crossing the Yalu River in 2014, recalled choosing a raccoon fur-lined quilted vest from K-Swiss, an item his teacher told him was stylish for the boys in his class. age. Yoon described the mall he went to, Shinsegae (meaning “new world”), as “an amazing alternative world.” He remembered buying short cotton pajamas that he had seen on the Korean series Stairway to Heaven.

When they left Hanawon, the three women discovered that daily life in South Korea hardly resembled what they had seen on television when they lived in North Korea.

Jihyun Kang, who defected in 2009, said it was the first time he really thought about the cost of dressing well: “The more I looked at clothes, the more I understood quality. I wanted nicer things, but I couldn't afford them. On seties, everyone wears expensive, colorful clothes and changes often, but in real life it wasn't like that at all."

“At first, I only knew about department store shopping and assumed that the best clothes were the most expensive,” Yoon says, adding that she thought touching something meant you had to buy it and she wasn't sure if It allowed him to try things on. She couldn't even imagine trying to give something back. “It was like other people were allowed to do these things, but somehow if I did it, everyone was looking at me.”

Kang Nara and Yoon admitted to feeling self-conscious about their clothes and their status as defectors, which are often frowned upon in South Korea. Yoon, in addition to hiding her North Korean origin, remembers that she tried to look and express herself as a local.

“Sometimes I thought about the outfits I wore back home and how everyone told me I looked pretty in them, but I never allowed myself to dress like that. He forced me to dress in the most South Korean way possible, ”she says. To understand what that meant, she spent hours on YouTube watching beauty tutorials and getting fashion advice from Get It Beauty, a South Korean TV show hosted by makeup artists and fashion celebrities.

Kang Nara says she regrets many of her early fashion decisions: “I dressed like rich people in North Korea in her interpretation of how rich Chinese dress,” she explains. Over time, she distilled and simplified her style, drawing inspiration from South Korean celebrities like actress Cha Jung-won.

“When people found out I was North Korean, they said they couldn't believe it, and their surprise was always a compliment,” says Kang. "He made me feel satisfied with the way I dressed: as if I were a crow that had managed to go unnoticed among the pigeons."

Wear Your Story

Social media has come to play an important role in helping defectors adjust to their new lives, especially YouTube, which some North Koreans have used to help South Koreans understand their plight. Over the past five years, a number of defectors have used the platform to talk about their lives and experiences.

Kang, one of the best-known YouTubers in this genre, has built her channel around her image as a North Korean fashion and beauty expert. Although most of her content is light, she in one video says that she once considered going back to North Korea.

“People tell me I've done a good resettlement job, but there were days I wanted to go home,” she says.

Yoon is enrolled in a business training program called Asan Sanghoe and hopes to create a line of cosmetics, focused on bright colors that would be banned in North Korea.

Jihyun Kang graduated from the same training program last year. In April, he launched a clothing line called Istory, for which he interviews North Korean defectors and then translates their stories into images, which are then printed on elbow pads and sewn on long-sleeved T-shirts.

A QR code on the T-shirt label leads to a webpage on the defector's history: family history, childhood, fleeing North Korea, and future goals. The T-shirt depicting Kang's story is a silhouette of Mount Paektu against an orange sunset in the background.

“Fashion allows you to tell a story,” Kang said, adding that through her work she has met many defectors who faced difficulties in North Korea and continue to overcome many things in South Korea. “The more people know about these stories, the more space there will be for change, and I want to be a part of that transformation.”