Dressed for succession: What Kim Ju Ae's outfits tell us about North Korea

Posted by Tartan_Samurai@reddit | anime_titties | View on Reddit | 6 comments

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SeeJayThinks@reddit

Fucking hell.

Put any male, dictator or not, there's no shit given if he wore Hugo Boss or Primark pajamas.

Put any female in any role, the media sudden defines them by what they wear. Next they'll be discussing her waistline and diet to maintain her dictatorship.

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North Korea is very focused on visual as form of communication. Who stands where, what they wear, and their position in the photo and video composition is itself a signal. It's no wonder media will focus on that.

Similarly, media has paid a lot of attention to Kim Jong Un appearance, and appearance of his father Kim Jong Il. It's not just sexism

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Tartan_Samurai@reddit (OP)

Plus we get so little info about the internal politics of N.Korea, its worth analysing every snippet we get from there!

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ModernirsmEnjoyer@reddit

North Korea communicates its politics through images. People inside those systems quickly figure out how to read that. Of course, a significant amount requires interpretation using knowledge that is acquired only in the channels of powers, but Kremlinology style analysis (and nontraditional analysis, basically anything that doesn't assume media will chew the food for you) can give real results.

I was shocked to learn how in the 1970s one American Kremlinologist accurately described why Nikolai Egorychec was dismissed from his post as the first secretary of Moscow Party chapter (corresponding to mayor) from newspapers and rumours. Yakolvev in his memories confirmed it as he was as there, though the American scholar made wrong conclusions from that information, but it's still remarkable given it was the Central Committee, the highest level of sensitivity, short of the Politburo only

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ModernirsmEnjoyer@reddit

It's quite interesting though. North Korea is very much a patriarchial society, and it's dominated by sectors that nearly any society associates with manhood - military, heavy industry, arms development, infrastructure building (though North Korea is also big on cutlure). And then Kim Jong Un, who is a shrewd politician that successfully navigated a pretty unstable political ground, suddenly decided to put a girl into the position of succession.

My own theory is that there is simply no better candidate, in a hereditary system, your choice of successors is limited. So he then uses the whole system of society - a system that mandates people to go anywhere where the people points to, to override a deeply held cultural belief. It might work, or it might fail. Let's wait and see.

And the earliest indicator has been January 2021, it's not going without any planning. They planned to do it at least for some time.