Kim Jong Un Declares War on Cosmetic Surgery – Breast Implants Now a Crime Punishable by Labour Camp

In mid-September, three individuals stood trial in North Korea—two young women and the doctor who treated them—bearing the crushing weight of an entire nation's judgment. Their fate was dire: a sentence to brutal labour camps, where survival itself is uncertain. Their crime? Undergoing plastic surgery.

Recently, Kim Jong Un has turned his anger toward plastic surgery, a target that has left many outside observers baffled. To most of the world, punishing a medical or cosmetic choice with the threat of labour camps may seem extreme, even absurd. However, within North Korea's ideological framework, the move follows traditional logic. State prosecutors and judges have denounced breast implants and similar procedures as 'non-socialist', branding them symbols of capitalist vanity and foreign corruption. By outlawing them, Kim positions himself as defending the nation's moral purity against the perceived encroachment of Western consumer culture.

Covert 'Breast' Operations

In the recent trial, the accused doctor was charged with smuggling silicone into the country to perform breast enlargement surgery on two young women. Because such procedures are deemed illegal under North Korean law, he carried them out in secret, using his own home as a makeshift operating room. Their arrangement, however, was short-lived: authorities uncovered the operation, leading all three to face public trial and the threat of severe punishment.

This trial will not only decide the fate of the three defendants but also cast a long shadow over their families. In North Korea, punishment often extends beyond the individual, with relatives enduring social stigma, surveillance, and discrimination. The shame of being branded 'anti-socialist' can isolate entire households, as neighbors and coworkers distance themselves for fear of guilt by association. In this way, a single act ripples outward, marking families as suspect and reinforcing the regime's culture of fear.

At the trial, the prosecutor declared that the female defendants could not even lift their faces under the weight of shame. He accused them of being 'consumed by vanity,' a trait he linked directly to Western decadence. In North Korea's ideological framework, such behavior is considered among the gravest forms of immorality—an open betrayal of socialist values in favor of capitalist corruption.

Direct Threat to Socialist Values

Despite the ban, fuller figures have become an aspirational trend in North Korea, with many affluent young women quietly seeking out cosmetic surgery. In response, Kim Jong Un has ordered a harsher crackdown, framing the practice as a direct threat to socialist values. Yet the more the regime pushes the procedures underground, the greater the danger becomes: women face not only the risk of severe punishment if discovered, but also the health hazards of undergoing surgeries in secret, unsanitary conditions.

This incident starkly illustrates the depth of North Korea's dictatorship, where personal liberties are stripped away under the banner of ideological purity. In the name of resisting the capitalist West, the regime continues to subject its citizens to humiliation, punishment, and fear. Sadly, there is little indication that such cruelty will end anytime soon.