Women of the world, get ready for North Korea’s cosmetics industry, which China’s state-run Global Times calculates is “neck-and-neck with Chanel by four main metrics and superior in safety.”
The Chinese are helpfully giving North Korea some free advertising ahead of the expected easing of sanctions and opening to world markets.
“Wandering on the streets of Pyongyang, it is not hard to notice that women in the capital city of North Korea care about their dress and appearance a lot despite the country’s underdeveloped economy,” the Global Times wrote on Monday in an unintentionally hilarious introduction to the couture of the world’s most oppressive regime.
The Pyongyang Cosmetics Factory has been in operation since the reign of North Korea’s first dictator, but only now has the factory been opened to the media. The Global Times was impressed with how quiet, tidy, and “free from the smell of chemicals it was.”
The current dictator, Kim Jong-un, ordered the factory to produce “the world’s best cosmetics” after paying a 2017 visit memorably chronicled by the UK Telegraph:
State newswire KCNA reported that his wife Ri Sol-ju made a rare public appearance to join him, releasing undated photos of her gazing over his shoulder as he picks up cosmetic products and talks excitedly about makeup, displaying his trademark maniacal laugh.
The supreme leader’s sister, Kim Yo-jong, also listened intently in the background as he reportedly urged the cosmetics industry to become ‘world competitive’ and praised the factory for helping North Korean women to ‘be more beautiful.’
The variety of cosmetics gave him great joy, reported KCNA, adding his comments that “not only the pattern of their vessels but packing boxes are very nice.”
North Korean science was immediately bent to the task of creating superior beauty products, reverse-engineering the finest beauty products from around the world to produce the Unhasu brand:
An LED screen displays the comparison results between Unhasu and several leading cosmetics brands around the world including Shiseido and Chanel on the four indexes: stability, safety, sensation, and effect.
“Our beloved leader sent us 138 kinds of cosmetic products from different world-famous brands, and we have made a detailed analysis,” Lee Seon-hee, the chief engineer of the cosmetics factory, told the Global Times.
“We developed our own products on the basis of the analysis. As you can see, our products have caught up with or even surpassed these international brands in terms of nutrition constituents,” Lee said proudly.
As the LED screen shows, moisturizing creams from Unhasu and Chanel are running neck and neck over three indexes, and Unhasu even beats Chanel on safety.
Ladies, if you can’t trust a North Korean LED screen, what can you trust?
According to the Pyongyang Cosmetics Factory staff, its products “contain abundant extracts from plants and animals that grow or live in North Korea,” which is why they are superior to everything else in the world. Well, that plus the LED screens. The Global Times correspondent could not get enough of all those high-tech displays.
“Our beloved leader paid visits to this cosmetics factory on February 4, 2015, and October 27, 2017, and provided us precious maxims. Under his leadership, we have seen a significant improvement in ‘combat power,’ as a result, the production capacity in our factory increased sixfold, and our number of product categories also proliferated by several times,” the factory’s chief engineer said in a mission statement bound to quicken the pulses of stylish women around the world. Hopefully, the marketing department remembers to list “Significantly Improved Combat Power” on the packaging as a selling point for these remarkable cosmetics.
Factory representatives were a bit vague on international orders so far, although they do have a globe in the exhibition hall that has red flags stuck in Russia, Iran, Cyprus, and Australia to mark them as “near future” export destinations. The Russians have allegedly placed an order, although its details are considered a “business secret.”
The Global Times noted that Pyongyang does not advertise its cosmetics, or much of anything else, through conventional channels such as television, which could be an obstacle to its global beauty aspirations.
Advertising for Pyongyang Cosmetics has thus far been limited to point of sale materials, word of mouth – state-approved products in North Korea always get rave reviews! – and persuading Chinese newspapers to write glowing articles about them. Another innovative marketing technique reportedly used by North Korean cosmetics firms involves tricking their customers into thinking the products come from South Korea.
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