Abstract

The present research explores North Korea’s sartorial consumption during the post-crisis period in the 2000s to evaluate the impact of transnational/ transsystemic cultural influence in a state socialist context. Based on interviews with North Korean refugees, we examine how the increasing desire for foreign consumer goods such as clothing, including those from capitalist countries, affected the practice of socialist identity. The testimonies revealed a particular sartorial hierarchy and hybridity formed since the Arduous March, effecting a transition from scarcity to style under which official ideology was both depreciated and appreciated. Two factors emerged from the interviews to explain this outcome: first, the lack of China’s cultural appeal; and second, the ambivalent consequences of marketization. While recognizing the quantity of Chinese economic clout, North Koreans did not regard China as a yardstick of quality. Struggling to achieve basic subsistence, the North Korean population held de-politicized and pragmatic outlooks, adopting means of self-expression in compliance with state controls. Marketization and external cultural influence as experienced in the illiberal, impoverished, and ultranationalist setting resulted in distinct notions of aesthetics and affluence. Given the interview findings, the significance of the market as a vehicle for reinforcing capitalist culture and values should not yet be overstated.