North Korea recently launched a sweeping crackdown aimed at privately operated barbershops and beauty salons.

A Daily NK source in North Hamgyong Province said Tuesday that police in Chongjin have been shutting down privately operated barbershops and beauty salons since late August.

“Along with the crackdown, the authorities have been forcing private barbers and hairdressers to work for service providers operated by the state,” he said.

While there are state-run barbershops and beauty salons in North Korea, there are also illegally operated private ones.

Unlike state-run shops, which must pay taxes to the state, private barbershops and beauty salons pay no taxes, so operators can take home all the money they make.

Because of this, many North Koreans have been operating illegal barbershops and beauty salons as a way to make a living with the collapse of the official rationing system after the “Arduous March” of the 1990s.

Private barbershops and beauty salons are particularly popular with young people because the shops will cut their hair however they like.

Since state-run barbershops and beauty salons offer a menu of set styles, less trendy middle-aged people tend to use them. The poor use them, too, because they are relatively cheap.

However, North Korea is cracking down hard on privately operated barbershops and beauty salons, considering them an illegal means to make money and “anti-socialist and non-socialist behavior” that promotes “individualism.” This suggests the authorities aim to collect the public’s money for state coffers by eliminating illegal facilities, making people use state-run facilities instead.

In late August, the Chongjin police began its intensive crackdown on the commercial cutting of hair in homes or streetside, warning that “privately operated barbershops and beauty salons are a product of individualism and anti-socialist and non-socialist behavior that promotes social instability and disorder.”

In particular, the city’s police are threatening those caught in the crackdown with KPW 100,000 in fines, and possible criminal punishment depending on the severity of the infraction.

“Having played dumb when the people were starving to death, the government is now stealing people’s livelihoods, too,” claimed the source. “People are reacting by saying the state should instead be grateful that people are getting by on their own without asking the nation for anything.

“The government is using the police to crack down on people running private barbershops and beauty salons, but there’s also a lot of resistance,” he continued, adding, “Ultimately, it looks like the state is simply fanning tensions between the police and the people.”

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