Eagle-eyed viewers noticed the hilarious censorship
In a bizarre move, North Korean state television blurred out the jeans of veteran British gardener Alan Titchmarsh during a recent broadcast of BBC program Secrets of the Garden. The 2010 episode aired on KCTV on Monday, but eagle-eyed viewers noticed the comical censorship – Mr Titchmarsh’s lower body was pixelated to hide his jeans.
Titchmarsh joked that North Korea’s censorship gave his gardening show some unexpected “street cred.”
“I’ve never considered myself a dangerous subversive imperialist – I’m generally seen as quite comfortable and harmless, so that actually gives me a bit of street cred, doesn’t it?” he said British Broadcasting Corporation.
Nam Sung-wook, an expert on North Korea and a professor at Korea University in Seoul, linked the jeans blur incident to North Korea’s newly implemented “Reactionary Ideology and Cultural Exclusion Law.”
“The bill aims to prohibit North Korean residents from imitating foreign countries in all aspects, including the way they dress and speak,” he told reporters. CNN.
🇰🇵🚨‼ ️ North Korea showed Alan Titchmarsh’s 2010 episode of Garden Confidential to morning viewers but censored his jeans.
In North Korea, jeans are considered a symbol of Western imperialism and have been banned since the 1990s.
— Lord Bebo (@MyLordBebo) March 27, 2024
Sung-wook said North Korea has banned residents from wearing jeans because of their association with U.S. imperialism. However, foreign tourists are not subject to this restriction.
South Korea researcher Peter Ward said North Korea’s censorship reflected its fight against “anti-socialist culture and ideology”.
“Blue jeans are associated with ‘decadent’ Western culture, just like in the Soviet Union, where Kim Jong Il ordered officials to eliminate them from the country in the 1990s,” he told CNN.
“They’ve been campaigning against anti-socialist culture since at least the early 1990s,” Ward said. “The intensity of these activities has increased, especially since 2020.”
That year, the “Reactionary Ideological and Cultural Exclusion Law” was introduced, prohibiting people from spreading, watching or listening to any cultural content classified as anti-socialist.
In the meantime, the state-run Korean Central News Agency said the law aims to prevent “the spread of anti-socialist ideology and culture… to preserve North Korea’s ideology, spirit and culture.”
North Korea has long been isolated from the international community and imposes strict controls on freedom of speech, movement and access to information. The country’s poor human rights record has drawn criticism from the United Nations. Internet use is severely restricted, and even those with access to smartphones are limited to government-controlled and heavily censored intranets.
Foreign material such as books and movies is banned, and severe penalties are imposed on individuals possessing contraband obtained through the black market.
