[imagesource: Reuters]

Neo from The Matrix may have made the black trench coat famous, but Kim Jong Un has perfected it.

Side note – we are less than a month away from the release of The Matrix Resurrections, so expect trench coats to be all the rage again soon.

Anyway, your man Kim in North Korea isn’t too keen on his minions cramping his style.

One of the benefits of living in a dictatorship is that you can act on a whim, and it appears the Supreme Leader has done just that.

Newsweek reports:

North Korean authorities have allegedly moved to ban residents wearing leather trench coats, saying it is disrespectful to emulate the fashion choices of the country’s leader Kim Jong Un…

Although leather jackets have been seen in Korean films since at least the early 2000s, Kim first appeared on television wearing a leather trench coat in 2019. They have been popular in the country ever since…

Image: AP

Initially, real leather coats were imported from China and were bought by North Korea’s elite, before coat makers imported fake leather and manufactured them domestically at a cut price.

I will add leather jackets to my list of North Korean no-nos along with smuggling in Squid Game.

Even at a knockoff price the jackets are well beyond the reach of your average North Korean citizen.

A fake leather coat can cost around 80 000 won. The average North Korean monthly salary in 2018 was around 4 000 won.

Leather coats really rose in prominence after Jong Un wore one during a military parade in January, as did his sister Kim Yo Jong.

The news comes too late for people who already forked out for a jacket:

Pyongsong recently started confiscating the coats from sellers and those wearing them in public.

“Young men protest, saying they bought the coats with their own money and there is no reason to take them away,” said the source.

Image: Reuters

“The police respond to the complaints, saying that wearing clothes designed to look like the Highest Dignity’s is an ‘impure trend to challenge the authority of the Highest Dignity.’ They instructed the public not to wear leather coats, because it is part of the party’s directive to decide who can wear them,” the person said.

You’d have to be a brave soul to venture out wearing one now.

Sure, Kim Jong Un did show actual human emotion last year for possibly the first time ever, but he still loves a good death by firing squad show and banishing people to a lifetime of hard labour.

You know who else loved a long leather trench coat? Adolf Hitler.

[source:newsweek]