Male university students in North Korea are now required to have their hair look like leader Kim Jong Un's, reports from media outlets in the region say.
The rule was implemented a couple of weeks ago, according to Radio Free Asia. The men are required to have the same haircut as the leader, called the "dear leader haircut," where the head's bottom half is shaved clean while layers of hair are left on top.
"Our leader's hair cut is very particular, if you will," a source told Radio Free Asia, according to the BBC. "It doesn't always go with everyone since everyone has different face and head shapes."
This is allegedly not the first time North Koreans have been instructed on which hairstyles to wear. Until recently men in the state were only allowed to choose from 10 hairstyles, while women were allowed to choose from 18, according to the BBC.
Then North Korea's state-run TV launched an anti-long hair campaign, titled "Let us trim our hair in accordance with the Socialist lifestyle."
North Koreans are unhappy to sport the "dear leader haircut" because people say it resembles Chinese smugglers, according to local reports.
"Until the mid-2000s, we called it the 'Chinese smuggler haircut,' " the Korea Times reported, according to the BBC.
Some experts say that reports of the required haircut are most likely false.
"This sounds like BS to me," Aidan Foster Carter, an Honorary Senior Research Fellow in Sociology & Modern Korea at Britain's Leeds University, told The Washington Post. "For a start, no one else in North Korea seems to sport a Kim Jong Un hairdo!"
Andray Abrahamian, Executive Director of the Singapore-based nonprofit Chosen Exchange, said everyone had regular haircuts when he was in North Korea last week.
"I think we can add this to the long list of ridiculous news stories from North Korea," Abrahamian told The Washington Post.
