current events
First off, this happens:
North Korea-made designer jeans launched in Sweden
STOCKHOLM — North Korea is making an unlikely foray into designer denim as the “Noko Jeans” label is launched in Sweden.
The brand is Swedish but the jeans are manufactured in North Korea, an experiment its creators described as a way to open doors to the reclusive communist country.
More than 1,000 pairs are going on sale online on Friday. Stockholm’s PUB department store says it will start selling the brand this weekend.
Two officials at North Korea’s Embassy in Stockholm confirmed that the jeans are made in the Asian country. They declined to give their names.
The chances of seeing the brand on the streets of Pyongyang are small.
Choi Eun-suk, a professor at Kyungnam University in Seoul, said jeans are banned in North Korea as they are considered a symbol of U.S. imperialism.
Copyright © 2009 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
(from here)
It didn’t last very long though:
updated 12:06 p.m. PT, 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.
(from here)
Jeans? Banned? Wow. I can’t imagine jeans being illegal. Huh.
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