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Vice Blog

BLUE JEANS VS. COMMUNISM ALL OVER AGAIN

In the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, walking around in a pair of blue jeans is about as smart as using the Korean flag as a diaper. Nevertheless, three young Swedes have ventured into the hermit kingdom and produced 1,100 pairs of fine denim work pants in the heart of North Korea. The store where their Noko Jeans were supposed to be sold

chickened out and removed them from their shelves to avoid controversy

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, but that doesn't make Noko's ballsy, diplomatic pantsmanship any less impressive. The first two models, Oke Loose Fit and Kara Slim Fit, cost about $250 a pair from the

Noko webstore

. We spoke to the Noko Jeans guys, Jakob Ohlsson, Jacob Åström, and Tor Rauden Källstigen.

Vice: Hello Noko Jeans guys, why are you producing jeans in North Korea? Jacob Åström:

Jeans happened to be our way into the most secluded place on earth. Everything in the world is accessible through Google and Wikipedia, except for North Korea. Its obscurity turned it into our obsession.

North Korea doesn't even have a website. Tor Rauden Källstigen:

The closest you get is a fan site, Korea-dpr.com, run by the Korean Friendship Association. Hungover on Tor's couch one Sunday in the summer of 2007, we discovered that the KFA had a business section. You can produce stuff like motorbikes, tanks, cosmetics, and jeans using North Korean labor. We were like, "Jeans? Of course!"

So you decided to get in touch with a bunch of folks who admire North Korean politics? Tor:

We eventually realized that all they were really offering were superexpensive business trips.

Jakob O:

It was a big disappointment. But we didn't give up. Without knowing how you're supposed to go about it, we contacted some companies in China and asked them for contacts at factories in Pyongyang.

You had no clue of what you were doing? Jacob Å:

We didn't know shit. We started randomly calling up trade experts.

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Tor:

The breakthrough was when we landed a meeting with Mr. Chang at the North Korean Embassy in Stockholm. We were pretty nervous. Their usual business with Europe consists of exporting thousands of tons of zinc to Italy and all we wanted to do was produce a very small number of jeans.

Did you have to bribe him with strippers and Absolut Vodka? Tor:

The challenge wasn't to convince them to do business with us. With the US trade embargo, they're happy for any business they can get. The challenge was to constantly explain that we were not interested in buying a zinc factory.

Yeah, that's a bit of an upsell. Jakob O:

We didn't know jeans were forbidden in North Korea or that it's impolite to say "no" in their culture, so they kept trying to get us interested in producing other things. The meetings would start with us suggesting we do a thousand pairs of jeans and they'd answer, "Not enough," then try to convince us to make 150,000 jackets. When that didn't work, they tried to get us to buy zinc and we had to start all over.

Jakob Å:

They also wanted our help importing make-up and a couple of Volvo busses.

Tor:

We met with Mr. Chang once every other week. In the end we became friends and he finally arranged for us to travel to North Korea on a business trip tailored especially for us. We even got to set the schedule!

Look at you, a VIP trip to North Korea! What was it like? Tor:

We went there by train, 25 hours from Beijing. Besides one other Chinese dude, we were the only foreigners.

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Did you talk to any North Koreans? Jacob Å:

They didn't speak English so we had to find other ways of communicating. Slapstick humor was very popular, like making one of the little snuffboxes that we'd brought with us "talk." We'd make the box say "Hello" using the lid as the mouth. They loved it! We used that during our entire stay, and we'd gradually let the box talk to bigger and bigger things. The highlight was when it said hello to the table at a business dinner. People laughed so hard they cried.

Did that work on the obligatory guide and translator assigned to keep an eye on you? Jacob Å:

She actually made

us

laugh. Imagine a North Korean girl in her 20s with the strongest Texan accent you've ever heard, like, "Haye gaaays, where ye' going?" Hilarious!

I'm already chuckling. Jacob Å:

Anyways, we stayed in this humongous 1,500-room hotel. The only other people staying there were a Russian tap-dance team, an old Swede who was an elevator engineer, and a bunch of Egyptian concrete experts who had just invested €3 million in North Korea.

Did they serve you giant bunnies? Jacob Å:

No. We did however eat some yummy double burgers, their version of the Big Mac I guess, at this restaurant we found on one of our walks. They let us walk around on our own! It took some nagging though.

Tor:

Walking at night was the best. They have no streetlights, so it's just pitch black. You can see every star in the sky and the bluish lights from the windows in the massive housing blocks were like an LED display, with people moving or lighting cigarettes.

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Jacob Å:

There's a car with loud speakers that drives around every morning waking people up at 6 am. We called it "The SHOUT! Car."

But how exactly did you get North Korea to say yes to jeans? Tor:

We had tons of meetings. You'd start by meeting a manager, if it went well you'd meet the middle manager, then the general manager, and so on. For every new person you had to do the presentation all over again, gain their trust and sell them on the idea of making jeans, or "fashion pants" as we called them.

Sounds like a video game. Tor:

Exactly, you'd finish one level, fight the boss, and then on to the next until you meet the big boss. Fail once and you die!

How did the fight with the final boss go? Jakob O:

We got a sign-off. We were lucky because he was young and nice.

Tor:

Clothing is one of their main industries because China subcontracts production there to get cheaper labor. But it's all hushed up and the clothes are still labeled "Made in China." So then we come along, not only promising to be open about where the jeans are made, but to build our whole concept around it.

Wait a minute! You're basically doing North Korean propaganda. How can you live with yourselves? Jakob O:

We believe we're making some kind of small difference by going there and talking to them. For example we told them all European companies require CSR, Corporate Social Responsibility, and that if they want to start trading with Europe they'd have to adjust their practices. Which isn't entirely true, but it feels good to spread the notion of ethical conditions, like decent work hours and no child labor. We're convinced that we're doing something good.

And you think they'll follow your standards? Tor:

We've seen the factory and it's a holiday camp compared to the factories we saw in China. It's brand-new with a few hundred workers, all in colorful uniforms, and the ambience is calm and quiet. They even had karaoke machines on the floors. The vintage kind with laser discs. And there's a badminton court on the top floor, so we'll bring rackets next time.

Sounds like they put on a nice show on for you.

TEXT BY MILÈNE LARSSON PHOTOS BY TOR RAUDEN KÄLLSTIGEN