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North Korean police have cracked down on cars with tinted windows because their owners are secretly using them to enjoy everything South Korea, unnoticed.
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And state media reported that dark windows are “the latest malign capitalist influence being eliminated in the country, as authorities fear that young people in North Korea are using South Korean music and movies while riding in their cars and taxis with tinted windows.”
Sources in the country say that drivers have been asked to replace their exposed windows, otherwise their cars will be confiscated if they refuse to do so.
The campaign comes in light of the law to reject “reactionary thought and culture”, which was passed last December, to eliminate foreign cultural influences.
Authorities described the tinted windows as part of the “yellow wind of capitalism,” a term often used in North Korea to describe creeping foreign influence.
Sources said that traffic police imposed fines of 30,000 won for the first violation, and confiscated cars if drivers were caught with illegal windows for the second time.
Drivers find the crackdown ridiculous, so many of them argue with the police and security, expressing their desire to know how tinted car windows are part of the capitalist yellow culture.
And excluded from the campaign are official cars with number plates starting with 727, in reference to a national holiday on July 27.
Cars with tinted windows have been seen before in the motorcade of leader Kim Jong Un, including on a trip to Russia’s Far East to meet Russian President Vladimir Putin in 2019.
The campaign against “reactionary thought” is also believed to include fines for people found in possession of unregistered phones, radios or televisions.
Captured violators could face up to 15 years in a concentration camp, and parents could be punished for their children’s use.
And a Japanese magazine reported last month that the new law bans speaking or writing in South Korean styles.
The only media permitted in North Korea consist of state-controlled ones, which glorify Kim and the ruling party.
But it is believed that many people watch South Korean dramas and movies in private, with some foreign media sourcing through the border trade with China.
Kim pledged at a recent party convention to expand North Korea’s wireless networks, which are severely besieged from abroad.
He said, “It will help people from cities to remote mountain villages to enjoy a better cultural and emotional life.”
Source: Daily Mail
