As North Korea censor a pair of jeans, the Euronews Culture team ask themselves: What would we want to blur out of fashion?
When you think of 74-year-old British gardener and broadcaster Alan Titchmarsh, who helms the wholesome ITV gardening show Love Your Garden, censorship is probably not the first word that springs to mind.
Still, that hasn’t deterred North Korea’s state television Central TV, which has censored a 2010 episode of the BBC gardening programme Alan Titchmarsh’s Garden Secrets (which does sound a bit filthy, come to think of it).
The reason? His jeans.
They blurred out presenter Titchmarsh’s trousers, as jeans are seen as a symbol of western imperialism in the secretive state – and are therefore banned.
According to Seoul-based NK News, North Korea’s rules prohibiting jeans have been in place since the 1990s. Then leader Kim Jong-il declared denim trousers to be a symbol of Western – and specifically American – imperialism, which had no place in a socialist state keen on cracking down on Western culture.
It is not clear how the regime acquired the rights to Garden Secrets to air the show, but the green-fingered presenter’s denim-clad lallies are now barred.
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