[0:00]Of all the countries in the world, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, more commonly known as North Korea, might just be the most mysterious. Nicknamed The Hermit Kingdom, it's famous for its isolation and independence, but also for its shocking lack of human rights. Because it exists under the iron-fisted rule of a dictatorship headed by supreme leader Kim Jong Un, its laws are some of the most extreme in the world. So, with that in mind, let's expose some of the craziest laws that have ever been enforced here that we know of.
[0:41]You snooze, you lose. Now, we've all fallen asleep when we've not meant to. Maybe it was in a Zoom meeting or on a school desk, and while you might expect some sort of punishment, you never expect capital punishment for it. Well, you would in North Korea. In 2015, Minister of Defense Hyun Yong-Chol was reportedly ordered to be, uh, dispatched for napping during military rallies. Kim Jong Un had him removed from his post immediately, and the sentence was carried out in public to send a message that laziness and insubordination will not be tolerated to everyone in the country. The crazy thing is, this isn't the only time it's happened. Just one year later, in 2016, North Korean Education Minister Kim Yong-Jin was dispatched in front of hundreds of people for having bad posture during a party rally. The supreme leader was so displeased with his poor posture, Kim Yong-Jin was interrogated before being labeled an anti-party, anti-revolutionary agitator and sentenced to capital punishment. Now that's one heck of a rude awakening. Ticket to Ride. Bicycles are an essential transport option for many people that live or work in busy cities. Yet in North Korea, bicycles were actually banned in the streets of its capital city, Pyongyang. Unlike neighboring China, which over the last century saw a natural progression from walking to cycling to motorized transportation, North Korea wanted to fast-track this progression. How? By banning bikes and insisting its citizens rely on motor vehicles to get around. This might have worked if their economy hadn't completely tanked in 1991, leaving most North Koreans too poor to afford enough to eat, let alone a car. As such, in 1992, Pyongyang's bicycle ban was lifted. But even now most of its citizens remain too poor to afford a car, so it's mainly bikes that are used on the empty roads. After this, you'd expect transport options would have improved, but sadly not. From 1995, the state decided to ban women from owning and riding bicycles. The regime's reasoning for the ban was that the sight of an attractive woman on a bike was deemed too suggestive and would damage public morality. She's just riding a bike? Well, that says a lot more about the ruling party being perverts than anything else. They also argued women were genetically incapable of handling traffic, making them a danger to others. Okay, North Korea, it's time to sit down, shut up and pay attention for a hot minute. Men are universally responsible for more traffic related accidents and fatalities than women. In 2021, in the US alone, women were responsible for around 6,000 fatal crashes. That number was three and a half times higher at more than 21,000 for men. So your genetically incapable argument just drove itself into a wall. Anyway, the ban was briefly lifted in 2012, but then reinstated in early 2013. Today, the rule is flexible, thanks to the lack of motorized public transportation in the country's main cities. But we can't say as much for the state of women's rights in the country. Speaking of which, Dress dictatorship. I don't know about you, but I live in my jeans. I couldn't imagine not being able to wear them. They're a closet staple. Now, what if I told you they were completely banned in North Korea? Since mid-2020, Kim Jong Un has announced a crackdown on Western influences, including all styles of jeans. But why? Well, this stems all the way back to the division of Korea in 1945, where South Korea, backed by capitalist America, fought the North, backed by the communist Soviet Union, for control over the country. Ever since the division, citizens in the north have been taught to view American capitalism and the wider Western world as the enemy, along with all their influences and values. It doesn't just stop at jeans, though. Unless you have a work uniform, women are technically not allowed to wear trousers in North Korea at all. The law is still enforceable to this day, but it's hard to enforce on a nation of 26 million people. If women are caught wearing them, a patriotic youth league member can and will interrogate the individual and force her to write a letter confessing to the crime. They even have the power to access government controlled loudspeakers, releasing the woman's name, home address, and place of work to the public. If you can get doxed just for wearing trousers, imagine the sentence they'd pass down for what TikTok influencers think are trendy these days. Well, between banning bikes and banning jeans, which rule do you think is the most ridiculous? For bikes, hit that like button, and for jeans, hit that subscribe button. Bad hair day. In the West, hair is often used to express your individuality. Some of us choose to have a spiky mohawk or bright blue hair, even the mullet is back in fashion. Never thought I'd see the day. But in North Korea, extreme hairstyles are heavily discouraged. It's likely you'd find yourself stopped by the pathetic, sorry, patriotic Youth League again and then forced to remove or cut your chosen style. In 2013, the state released a guide of 28 approved hairstyles. 10 for men, 18 for women. Although there are a few more styles to choose from nowadays, it's still forbidden for men to have hair longer than two inches, and you're only permitted to grow it as long as three if you're over 60 years old. How generous of them. As a result, young men are required to cut their hair every 15 days before it grows out. For women, having short hair is allowed when you're married, with long hair and curled styles that look similar to those worn in the West in the 1980s, allowed when you're young and single. Better than the Kim Jong Un cut, I guess. No Kim-itations. With 8 billion people on the planet, there's bound to be someone out there who has the same name as you. But Kim Jong Un decided that his name should be unique. And now, all North Koreans are prohibited from sharing it. That's right, everyone called Jong Un was forced to completely change their name in 2011, the year he became the supreme leader. He's also recently extended this rule to include his daughter's name, Kim Ju-Ae, who at this point appears to be his successor. While there is no exact number on the amount of people who had to rename themselves, Jong Un was an extremely common name amongst North Koreans. So basically, he made himself the one Kim Jong Un to rule them all. Man, I wouldn't be surprised if there were a couple of Hobbits out there trying to take this dictator down. Cellular offense. Thanks to the advancement of cellphone technology, you can call just about anyone anywhere in the world. Unless they're in North Korea. As standard, the country's popular domestic mobile phone service, Koryolink, blocks all international calls. Signal jammers are used at the country's borders, and just about all electronic communications are monitored.
[9:05]As such, any form of international communication without specific government authorization is forbidden. The fear is that contact with people from the outside may prompt citizens to realize how harsh the regime is, undoing the decades of brainwashing from propaganda they've been fed on a daily basis. And subsequently, their citizens will either try to flee or rise up against the government en masse. Back in 2014, a man used a smuggled phone and SIM card to make several international calls and was dispatched for contacting his family who defected to South Korea. He sadly didn't have enough time to hide the phone before officials locked onto his signal and came knocking on his door. His demise was used to make a very public example of those who break the rules, in the worst way possible. Regime real estate. A lot of us dream of being able to buy a house one day. Having your own place is considered by most a basic necessity, but not so in North Korea. Like so much else here, the government controls all property in the country. All buildings are technically owned by the state, and citizens are assigned to their housing by them too. It's even harder to make a life for yourself in a big city. North Koreans have to be granted permission to live in the country's capital, Pyongyang. It's also illegal to lease or trade your home, but since 2000, North Koreans have utilized a clever loophole in the system. While they don't have property rights, they do have residency rights. This is confirmed by a certificate known as Ipsajung. A document proving the person lives in a specific place. North Koreans have been issuing new certificates under other names and canceling older ones, thereby passing on the ownership to another person. But because it skirts the law, citizens need enough money to bribe city officials into looking the other way. A pack of cigarettes or a good bottle of liquor apparently does the trick. In cash, you may be expected to pay as little as 50 to 100 to secure the exchange. I mean, if you're going to limit people's freedom as harshly as this, you got to expect the people to fight back in some way. Joyless July. Of all the totally unhinged laws enforced by the North Korean government, this next one might be the most insane. Kim Jong Un and his regime have completely banned smiling on July 8th every year. This date is significant in the country as the death date of founder and former president Kim Il-Sung, who passed in 1994. On each anniversary of his death, citizens are not allowed to smile, talk loudly, dance, or drink alcohol. No fun celebrations or activities can be held either, so if it's your birthday that day, you're completely out of luck. Disregarding these rules will send you to the labor camp and may even be cause for your dispatch. Who would have thought smiling could be a capital crime? Well, in recent times, it's only gotten worse. The government banned laughing for 11 days straight in a show of mourning. This rule was enforced to honor the 10th anniversary of Kim Jong Il's death, the predecessor and father to Kim Jong Un. This has got to be the weirdest family tradition ever. Online off-limits. It's extremely hard to picture our lives without the Internet now. Over 65% of the world's population has access to it, and it's actively used by 5.3 billion people. You're using it to watch this video right now. And yet, North Koreans can't use it the way we do at all. Instead of the Internet, North Korea provides its citizens with access to an intranet, a domestic only network known as Kwangmyong, which back in 2014, boasted it gave its users access to 5,500 websites. Including things like video games, though all communication and activity on them is monitored. No privacy here. Certainly, state officials can be granted access to the wider Internet, but with the suppression of information being so important to the regime, even this can be limited. In 2016, a security engineer discovered North Korea had actually created 28 websites available on the wider Internet. These include friend.com.kp, a kind of hyperpolitical Facebook, which apparently has some 18 million members. There's also cooks.org.kp, a recipe website, and corfilm.com.kp, where you can watch hundreds of North Korean films, documentaries, and even anime. Yes, anime. It's believed more sites have been added in recent years, but still, compared to the two billion sites on the World Wide Web, it's barely anything at all. Job jail. When you were younger, what did you want to be when you grew up? An astronaut, a ballerina, a YouTuber? Yeah, you can tell which one I was. Unfortunately, North Korean kids don't get to dream because everyone's lifelong job is delegated by the government. Why? Well, that's simple. To maintain the rigid control of resources under its collectivism system, the government researches how many people are needed in each industry and location, then assigns people accordingly. When kids graduate high school, the government assigns each and every graduate with jobs they think proper or necessary. What the kids or their parents want isn't taken into consideration, unless big bribes are involved. And once you're assigned work, it's almost impossible to be transferred. For example, during Kim Jong Il's reign, he supervised an area called Taehongdan-gun, which had a good potato supply, but had few people living in it. So, thousands of graduates were relocated to Ryanggang to become lifelong potato farmers. They had to build houses with their own hands and knew that their children would also likely grow up to be potato farmers thanks to the system. But there was nothing they could do. Well, at the very least, I really hope they like potatoes.
[15:47]Forbidden faith. In the West, freedom of religion is a pretty essential human right. You can choose to believe whatever you want, being that the Son of God walked amongst us as the Bible teaches, or that galactic warlords invaded our volcanoes 75 million years ago as Scientology claims. But in North Korea, freedom of faith isn't a thing. In 2014, an American was imprisoned for five months for leaving his Bible in a North Korean restaurant toilet. The outrage this incident caused stems from the fact that North Korea is a largely atheist state, with an enormous 70% of its citizens having no religion. Although there are churches located in Pyongyang, these buildings are fully operated by the state. Tourists have reported that churches can be closed during advertised sermon times, and when they are open, they're filled with political propaganda and fake believers. Observing the Christian religion as in North Korean is restricted completely. Because having faith in a higher power or savior-like figure conflicts with having faith in the reigning regime. You can't believe in both, according to North Korea. It's the Kim family or nothing. One extreme case in 2023 involved the arrest of a family, including their two-year-old daughter for possessing a Bible. All family members, including the toddler, were apparently sentenced to life in prison. Yep, Kim Jong Un's definitely going to hell for this one. Rules of the game. If you're a basketball fan, you might feel a little confused when watching a North Korean game. As we've learned, North Korea has its own way of doing things, so naturally, their basketball games are vastly different. Firstly, the famous three-pointer is worth four points if the ball passes through the net without striking the basket or backboard. And a slam dunk acquires an extra point making it worth three instead of two. That's not all. A point can be deducted for every missed free throw, and any field goal made in the last three seconds of a game can not only earn your team extra, it can completely change the outcome with a bump up of eight points. Games can also end in a tie against opponents, something that's rare in the normal rule book. Kim Jong Il supposedly added these amendments because he, uh, thought it could improve the rules of the game. By God, this man's ego is unbelievable. Also it turns out he was a fan of the 1990s Chicago Bulls team. You know that famously American team. That's a slam dunk for hypocrisy right there. Which of these rules and laws did you think was the craziest of them all? And controversially, are there any you agree with? Let me know down in the comments, and thanks for watching.
