North Korea: Male University Students Required To Get Kim Jong-un Haircuts 110
An anonymous reader writes in with one more reason not to accept that full-ride scholarship to a North Korea University. "Male university students in North Korea are now required to get the same haircut as their leader Kim Jong-un, it is reported. The state-sanctioned guideline was introduced in the capital Pyongyang about two weeks ago, Radio Free Asia reports. It is now being rolled out across the country - although some people have expressed reservations about getting the look. 'Our leader's haircut is very particular, if you will,' one source tells Radio Free Asia. 'It doesn't always go with everyone since everyone has different face and head shapes.' Meanwhile, a North Korean now living in China says the look is actually unpopular at home because people think it resembles Chinese smugglers. 'Until the mid-2000s, we called it the "Chinese smuggler haircut",' the Korea Times reports."
Debunked. (Score:5, Informative)
The good news about being late to post stories (that aren't for nerds and don't matter), is that they've already been debunked:
http://www.theglobeandmail.com... [theglobeandmail.com]
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Re:Debunked. (Score:5, Insightful)
Kind of sad what Slashdot has become. When CNN is already reporting this as a fake, for it to appear here is a joke.
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Or maybe they'r just lazy fucks.
Spoiler Alert (Score:2)
And it's not a fake until our hive says it's a fake.
News happens, our lessers comment on it, and then and only then, we release a quasi-official opinion.
Re:Debunked. (Score:5, Informative)
That article's a strawman - it's debunking a claim that nobody made.
North Korea has a restricted number of haircuts that barbers are allowed to perform - 10 for men, and 18 for women. That's not in doubt, that article even referenced the fact.
The new claim was that the number of allowed haircuts for men was being reduced to 1. That doesn't mean the everyone in the country had to rush out and get their hair cut, it means that the next time they get their haircut, they will be forced to take a Kim Jong-un cut.
So the fact that a bunch of visitors haven't seen a sudden growth in Jong-un-style haircuts neither proves nor disproves the original claim.
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So the fact that a bunch of visitors haven't seen a sudden growth in Jong-un-style haircuts neither proves nor disproves the original claim.
So visitors watching men walking out of a barber shop with 1 of the 10 (and not a Jong-un-style) doesn't debunk the original claim?
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Not if the policy isn't in full effect, no.
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Re:Debunked. (Score:5, Informative)
That's not in doubt, that article even referenced the fact.
Yeah it references it by saying:
And photos of suggested hairstyles posted outside women’s hair salons — the kind of photos a customer points at to speed up the explanation process — are regularly depicted by foreign media as showing the only sanctioned styles North Korean women can choose from.
Not true. But don’t tell that to the Internet.
Emphasis added.
It's a smokescreen to distract from the REAL order (Score:2, Offtopic)
Debunked and Disappointed (Score:5, Funny)
Too bad it's not true, because chicks dig that haircut.
I understand Jong-un is a real pussy magnet. At least that's what Dennis Rodman says.
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Lots of women find themselves suddenly attracted to men who can have them imprisoned or killed if they act disinterested.
I thought you were joking until I found this link: North Korea executes leader's ex-girlfriend [theglobeandmail.com]
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from the Globe and Mail article:
Someone has a good understanding of biology :-)
Well, it could be worse; (Score:1)
...at least it's not a mullet
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...at least it's not a mullet
Mullets are cool. Kim Jong-un's haircut is just crap.
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Wait...they have universities? (Score:4, Interesting)
Wait, they have students? (Score:3)
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University of Potemkin, Class of 2014! WOO!
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Remember the Monty Python "Dennis Moore" sketch? Well North Korea did it for real. Under the Songbun [wikipedia.org] system turned the old system of hereditary aristocracy on its head, producing ... another hereditary aristocracy.
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Stalinist Communism is a really bizarre piece of double think.
Before the revolution you have evil aristocrats ruling over a mass of brutalised serfs.
Post revolution you have quite a New Class/Songbun which de facto aristocracy ruling over workers working on collective farms. And workers on collective farms have no right to change jobs, so their status is much more serf-like than it was pre revolution.
Just to make it even more Orwellian the pre revolutionary system wasn't actually like this. E.g. before the
Re: Orwellian? George Orwell was a Socialist. (Score:1)
He also thought that the USSR was totalitarian and not socialist. In 1945 he voted for the Labour Party which was democratic socialist. Labour was a party that grew out of the unions and whatever you can say about Labour there were definitely not about turning the workers into serfs.
Which is the point really - the USSR did the opposite of what democratic socialists like Orwell wanted and called it socialism.
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When Orwell was alive you could be a socialist and not be complete idiot. We've had another 100 years of history to inform us. That is no longer true.
The defects in Socialism are inherent. There is no fixing it.
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Yep, they even have Internet with unrestricted access... to 127.0.0.1.
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The official North Korean news website is: Naenara. [naenara.com.kp] It's quite interesting in a way. It reminds me of news services from China or the USSR in the height of the cold war.
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Re:Wait...they have universities? (Score:4, Insightful)
That the USA for example.
What is Godwin's law for Slashdot called? i.e. any Slashdot story about North Korea, after sufficient threads, will claim the USA is similar to North Korea in the given trait being discussed..
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Then why do so many foreigners come to the USA to study?
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The haircuts.
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No wait, AC?!!
+0 internets.
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I'm not saying the US's universities are better than those anywhere else. (They're not.) I'm saying they're not, as great-grandparent insinuated, bad.
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I thought degree is what you go to university for?
Getting back at us? (Score:5, Funny)
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Like this post on social media [slashdot.org]
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I think it's just North Korea getting back at us for all The Onion stories they have fallen for.
I think you mean, "... it's just North Korea getting back at us for all the Onion stories they have implemented as policy."
piffle (Score:1)
It's North Korea who cares.
Much like pro creationism videos on Youtube... (Score:2)
I can't determine with any confidence if they're actually serious or not.
Tomorrow... (Score:1)
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How do they tell which end ? (Score:1)
Our leader's haircut is very particular !
Sure that's because their leader's ass and face look the same.
Wonder what unlucky soul gets the job to pick which side is actually the face?
Dubious company (Score:3)
So I guess the "murdering dictator haircut" is in good company.
Hoax (Score:2)
Re:Hoax (Score:5, Insightful)
But a good one, it was not SO far out that it was easily debunked.
Then again, creating a believable hoax around NK is like shooting fish in a barrel.
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They're more advanced than we realised! (Score:2)
Until the mid-2000s
Oh shit, they've got time travel!
North Korea has universities? (Score:2)
what
Could the Dear leader be wrong? (Score:2)
Could the Dear leader be wrong?
After all, haircut #7 looks better. But objectively speaking, my subjective meaning might not matter.
PS: I guess all responses should hence forth be sent me C/O camp #14.
There IS Precedent (Score:2)
Some of us can only dream... (Score:2)
"I believe everything I hear out of North Korea" (Score:2)
Counting their blessings ... (Score:2)
In Soviet Russia, head (of state) shaves you!
Re:Haircuts are cheap (Score:4, Insightful)
You do know that an insurance policy is just a policy. The same thing applies to anyone buying it. You could just as truthfully say that women's health insurance covers testicular cancer.
It's not like insurance policies just changed this year to include it. They've been like that for years. You'd know that if you had ever read your policy.
Re:Haircuts are cheap (Score:5, Insightful)
Meanwhile, women have been buying health insurance that covers testicular cancer the whole time. Stuff a sock in it... This is how insurance works. We pool everyone. You're not buying specific health procedures. You're buying decreased risk. That's how insurance works. You got lumped into a pool that includes women.
If you only want to pay for SPECIFICALLY what you get sick for, we call that self insured. We also call that Not Insured.
I'm getting really sick of this stupid !@#$ing meme and the stupid !@#$ers that keep repeating it.
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Risk is the product of probability and cost
No it isn't, you fucking moron. The product of probability and cost is the expected cost; risk is almost exactly the opposite. Risk is a measure of uncertainty; it's vague because there are many ways to define risk. For instance, one may define risk as the probability that seeking medical care will completely ruin you financially. It's easy to reduce this risk, even if it increases the average cost of medical care. There are many other definitions which I won't bot
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The probability of me breaking my arm last year are 0, but the insurance company still wants me to pay them. It's a complete injustice.
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As a Man who spent the last 25 years paying for his wife's birth control out of his own paycheck (or via *gasp* his health insurance), that goes double for me. It was an entirely health-related expense, just like the three pregnancies were, and the tubal ligation was. Or should those not be paid for either? In fact, for the last three years, my wife has had a particular "birth control" prescribed to her purely as a method to keep her hormones balanced properly (otherwise she would get migraines so bad she c
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You're buying insurance for both yourself and your wife, so your case isn't relevant to the discussion. Obviously any policy covering both a male and a female will include coverage for male-specific procedures for the male and female-specific procedures for the female. That doesn't imply that anyone should be forced to buy insurance for a procedure he or she is guaranteed to never need. Gender should be taken into account when calculating risk factors and premiums.
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This is not the use that people are complaining about.
You are absolutely correct that it isn't the way the current Koch-approved talking point is worded. But that hardly matters one bit to the rest of us once the drugs are removed from the insurance company's payment schedule, now does it? The effect most certainly would be that some medically necessary hormone treatments will become unpaid due to the fact that they are accomplished using pills or patches that are also used for birth control.
And yes, 50% of the population is trying to point this out [youngwomenshealth.org]. I hear
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Here in the US, males 26 and older are forced to buy health insurance that includes pregnancy, even though pregnancy isn't a health condition for males.
Yeah, and? Insurance plans have been that way for decades and decades.
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Men pay more for all other types of insurance, car, life, etc. The one type of insurance that historically men paid a little less for was health and that was not just for because they had less reasons to have medical visits in studies of doctor visit men just visit doctor far less and run up lower costs for visit that are not related to differences in the sexes. As such men could in the past purchase insurance that took that in to
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