Sale of 220 dollar North Korean jeans hit by politics

[Sea Skimmer]

Swedish store removes N. Korean jeans
Entrepreneurs sell $220 jeans hoping to break country's isolation
The Associated Press
updated 3:06 p.m. ET, Sat., Dec . 5, 2009

STOCKHOLM - A Stockholm department store on Saturday removed a new line of North Korean-made designer jeans from its shelves, saying it wants to avoid courting controversy through ties with the isolated communist nation.
The PUB department store's management had not been informed that the label would be carried in its space, and pulled the plug when it became aware of it, said Rene Stephansen, the store's director.

"For us this is not a question of Noko Jeans — this is a question about a political issue that PUB doesn't want to be associated with," he said. "This is not the forum for the discussion" of North Korea.

The Noko Jeans line is the brainchild of three Swedish entrepreneurs who hoped their label would help break North Korea's isolation through increased trade with the West. The jeans come only in black, partly because blue jeans are associated with the United States and are stigmatized in North Korea.

The jeans were to be sold at Aplace, a retail space within the department store. Stephansen said he had informed the shop's owner of the decision just before the planned launch.

A spokesman for Aplace said the decision was "a bit cowardly" but said that he understood the department store's point of view.
Web site sales to continue

"It's a real shame," Kalle Tollmar said. "But we will continue to sell them on our Web site and Noko Jeans will continue to sell them on theirs."

North Korea, led with absolute authority by leader Kim Jong Il, is one of the most closed countries in the world. The average North Korean is prohibited from accessing outside TV, radio or Internet, and only the elite are able to leave the country. Foreigners — and foreign goods — are largely seen as a threat by the communist regime.

Jeans have been banned in the country for years because they are considered a symbol of U.S. imperialism, said Choi Eun-suk, a professor of North Korean legal affairs at the Institute for Far Eastern Studies at Kyungnam University in Seoul.
In 2005, the regime also urged the country's women to refrain from wearing trousers, saying Western clothing dampen the revolutionary spirit and blur national pride.

Jacob Astrom, one of the three Noko Jeans founders, said he regretted the decision, but said it would be welcome if it leads to scrutiny of conditions in the developing world for workers making the brands it carries.
"Of course it's a pity; it was exciting to be at a space like PUB, but if this means that they're embarking on a larger initiative to look over the brands they have, then we think it's a good thing," he said.
Idea to 'shake this isolation up a bit'

He said neither he nor his two partners had been contacted by PUB yet.
"This is not a support project (for Kim Jong Il), but is a way for us to get closer to the country and, in a controversial fashion, shake this isolation up a bit."

The trio is currently looking at new retail space, he said.
The Noko Jeans team had initially planned to start its online sale on Friday, but Astrom said that had been postponed because of technical problems with the Web site. The sale is scheduled to start next week, he said.
The jeans come in two models, the slim-fit "Kara" and the loose-fit "Oke" and the price tag is 1,500 kronor ($220). They are cut, made and trimmed by factory workers in North Korea's capital Pyongyang, while material, buttons and zippers are supplied from other countries.

Copyright 2009 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/34288450/ns ... _business/

What was that about article about the ultra expensive jeans market collapsing again? And my god who'd have thought giving gold to North Korea would cause controversy? All I can really say is go North Korea for finding people this dumb in the world.

[Zixinus]

I think that a prospect of fashionable controversy and reputation was made in this attempt. I mean, North Korea advocates (according to the article) that women shouldn't wear trousers (really? what happened to all that Soviet-era feminism? also, what about areas of work where skirts are useless?). It is insane to think that these people would buy jeans or that the government would allow these jeans to be sold.

[Isolder74]

(really? what happened to all that Soviet-era feminism? also, what about areas of work where skirts are useless?).

Hey this North Korea we are talking about here. It wouldn't surprise me if their idea of 'woman's work' is the making of more North Koreans!

[Duckie]

I think that a prospect of fashionable controversy and reputation was made in this attempt. I mean, North Korea advocates (according to the article) that women shouldn't wear trousers (really? what happened to all that Soviet-era feminism? also, what about areas of work where skirts are useless?). It is insane to think that these people would buy jeans or that the government would allow these jeans to be sold.

I doubt soviet-era feminism would apply given that North Korea's dominant ideology is Juche, which is different from orthodox communism even more than chinese communism is.

[Sea Skimmer]

North Korea did have ‘breed more people’ as a major theme in propaganda, as did the Nazis and Japanese in WW2, but it stopped around 1992 when they actually began a propaganda campaign to encourage people to eat only two meals a day because it was ‘healthy’. The famine began soon after.

[mr friendly guy]

What I want to know, how high quality are these jeans being sold at $220 a pop. Granted I am not a big fan of jeans, but I am curious as to whether the price is so high because a) reputedly good quality like those other over price (but good quality) jeans or b) the novelty that it comes from North Korea.

[Sea Skimmer]

I don’t think you can even make a pair of jeans high enough quality to actually justify a 200 dollar price tag. Like many other high end consumer goods the only reason to buy such an object is so people know how much money you spent on it. In this case they also let people know that you support slave labor and nuclear bomb construction.

[Simon_Jester]

I don’t think you can even make a pair of jeans high enough quality to actually justify a 200 dollar price tag. Like many other high end consumer goods the only reason to buy such an object is so people know how much money you spent on it. In this case they also let people know that you support slave labor and nuclear bomb construction.

True.

Of course, while you can't make jeans good enough to justify a 200$ price tag, you can certainly make them bad enough to make paying 200$ completely idiotic, as opposed to incompletely idiotic. In short: are these very expensive jeans on par with normal designer jeans, or are they the fashion equivalent of what would happen if the designers of the Yugo had decided to start making luxury cars for export?

[Sea Skimmer]

Fuck if I know, I hate jeans anyway because I can absolutely never find a pair that even comes close to fitting right even when merely as a joke I try on the really expensive ones just to see if such a thing can exist for me. I'd kind of assume though that whoever invested in this project would not have done so just to produce really low quality goods. I mean it might be North Korea, but sewing together jeans is not hard and the dye and cloth may be imported.

[cosmicalstorm]

While on the subject of North Korea...

North Korea 'panic' after surprise currency revaluation

Budding private sector suspended as savers rush to change money after Pyongyang redenominates the won to curb inflation

North Korea's surprise decision to redenominate its currency has prompted panic and despair among merchants left with piles of worthless notes, even driving one couple to suicide, activists said today.

North Korea informed citizens and foreign embassies on Monday that it would redenominate its national currency, the won, diplomats said. Residents in the reclusive communist state were told they have until Sunday to exchange a limited amount of old bills, they said.

The news sent Pyongyang residents rushing to the black market to convert hoarded bills into US dollars and Chinese yuan, South Korea's Yonhap news agency reported, citing unidentified North Korean traders operating in neighbouring China.

Shops, bathhouses, barber shops and restaurants have closed, activists said.

"We heard business and market activities were all suspended," said Lee Seung-yong, an official at Good Friends, a Seoul-based civic group that sends food and other aid to North Korea. "People have no money to engage in business."

Authorities have threatened "merciless punishment" for anyone violating currency exchange rules, Good Friends said.

The overhaul of the North Korean won – the most drastic in 50 years – aims to curb runaway inflation and clamp down on the street markets that have sprung up in the tightly controlled nation, analysts said.

Unable to feed its 24 million people, the regime began allowing some markets in 2002, including farmers' markets.

The markets may have encouraged trade but they also brought in banned goods such as films and soap operas from South Korea, threatening leader Kim Jong-il's totalitarian rule, analysts said. The country's largest wholesale market, in Pyongyang, reportedly closed in June.

With the currency overhaul, the government is retaking control of the economy from merchants, analysts said.

"This is aimed at rooting out the budding private sector," said Jeong Kwang-min, a research fellow at the Institute for National Security Strategy in Seoul, adding that the move has a broader goal: to pave the way for Kim Jong-il to hand power to his youngest son, Kim Jong-un, and to ensure he inherits a stable economy.

Kim, 67, has led North Korea since 1994 but he is said to have suffered a stroke in August 2008.

The country has endured economic turmoil since the collapse of the Soviet Union and flooding and economic mismanagement in the mid-1990s. North Korea since has relied on international food handouts and aid negotiated in exchange for promises to dismantle its nuclear programme.

Much of that aid has been suspended, and international sanctions tightened, because of Pyongyang's nuclear defiance.

The currency overhaul comes just days before President Barack Obama's envoy on North Korea visits Pyongyang to try to persuade the regime to return to nuclear disarmament talks.

North Korea announced on state radio that the exchange rate would be set at 100 old won to 1 new won, one foreign diplomat said. Residents will only be allowed to exchange 150,000 won for the new currency, according to South Korea's Joong Ang Ilbo newspaper and other media outlets monitoring North Korean radio.

Cash in excess of the allowed amount must be saved in government-run banks, but it was not clear if residents could change that money into new bills, according to South Korean media.

A stampede in Hoeryong, in the north-east, nearly forced the suspension of trains, with guards blocking the entrance to a bank in the city, the Seoul-based Network for North Korean Democracy and Human Rights said, citing unidentified sources.

In North Hamgyong province, a merchant couple in their 60s killed themselves after hearing of the revaluation, said the Daily NK, a Seoul-based online news outlet that focuses on North Korean affairs.

Yoo Ho-yeol, a North Korea expert at Seoul's Korea University, said he did not expect any further drastic measures. He said: "Other kinds of private economic enterprise will eventually spring up again."