North Korea broadcasts Western gardening show on TV, but blurs presenter’s legs for wearing jeans

North Korean state television censored a pair of jeans a man was wearing on Monday when it aired a British show about gardening, a move that shows how far censorship measures on Western fashion and culture have gone.

In the episode of the BBC series “Garden Secrets” broadcast in North Korea, the British filmmaker Alan Titchmarsh, who is dressed in jeans, gets down on his knees in a garden to show how to care for a plant. Korean state television (KCTV) blurred Titchmarsh’s legs to hide his trousers, although they were clearly blue.

In North Korea, that episode, about gardens in the United Kingdom, has been broadcast several times since 2022, although it was produced in 2010.

Titchmarsh expressed his surprise in the British media after hearing that his show had been broadcast in North Korea, but was unaware that his trousers had been blurred.

Jeans have been banned in North Korea since at least the early 1990s by former leader Kim Jong Il, according to NK News. Source correspondent Peter Ward says it is unusual, however, for this item to be censored on TV, given that authorities have allowed foreign tourists visiting the country over the years to wear just about anything fashionable in the West .

North Korea considers the jeans a “symbol of US imperialism”, given their close association with the US.

Authorities have increasingly limited foreign cultural influence in recent years, with leader Kim Jong Un saying it undermines North Korean values.

In 2022, the authorities in this country took strict measures against skinny jeans, which were extremely popular in South Korea.

North Korean television constantly broadcasts politically neutral foreign television programs, such as sports, and the country is likely to pirate them, given that sanctions could prevent Pyongyang from obtaining broadcast rights.

When it airs “Garden Secrets,” Korean television cuts the hour-long episodes to just 15 minutes and replaces Titchmarsh’s commentary with that of a Korean narrator, while adding a soundtrack of North Korean instrumental music.

Publisher: DC

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