FILE PHOTO: A woman in her twenties who was forcibly filmed by the authorities for wearing foreign styles of clothing. (Daily NK)
A group of Pyongyang teenagers were recently hauled before a public struggle session for painting their nails.
A source in Pyongyang told Daily NK that an ideological struggle session was held at the Mangyongdae Children’s Palace. The session was organized by the municipal department of education and the Mangyongdae district police department.
The session was attended by all students (aged 11–17) at the Mangyongdae Children’s Palace and their teachers.
The meeting was convened following reports that male students had been painting female students’ nails at several schools in Pyongyang, a practice that had reportedly originated with students at the Mangyongdae Children’s Palace. This nail art was condemned at the meeting as “a romantic activity that compromises socialist norms.”
“It should be regarded as a serious issue that such behavior has occurred at the Mangyongdae Children’s Palace, which is widely known as a global model of joyful activities. Such behavior constitutes ideological deviation,” officials said during the meeting.
Following the lecture, twelve students who had engaged in the behavior in question were brought onto the stage. After being publicly denounced by teachers and other students, they reportedly engaged in self-criticism, confessing their behavior and expressing remorse.
Public questions whether punishment fits the crime
But after the day’s struggle session, some of the students and teachers at the meeting questioned whether nail painting really merited that level of criticism.
Given an age-old Korean tradition of women dyeing their fingernails with the petals of the garden balsam flower (bongseonhwa in Korean), as well as associated romantic sayings, they said the teenagers should have been let off with a warning. In short, they said, publicly condemning the teenagers for “ideological deviation” was an extreme measure.
The authorities’ response seemed particularly excessive considering that the teenagers had only painted their nails light pink, rather than some gaudy or provocative color.
After their stint at the struggle session, the twelve teenagers were disqualified from attending any more after-school programs, the source said.
The authorities apparently notified their parents’ workplaces and inminban (neighborhood watch units) about the incident as an act of public humiliation, the source added, leaving a black mark on the reputations of both children and parents.
Rumors about the incident have caused some North Koreans to reportedly comment that “treating teenagers’ silly games as anti-socialist and non-socialist behavior surely represents an attempt to control every aspect of their lives.”
“Several individuals remarked that condemning adolescent behavior based on simple curiosity and playfulness is really taking things too far. They think the government is resorting to excessive controls and punishments to control young people’s ideology,” the source said.
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