Pyongyang, the North Korean capital, is becoming a global fashion hotspot. If you did a double-take on that sentence, then you’re behind the times - according to Russia’s most-watched TV station.
While much of the world’s media has been obsessing over North Korea’s autocratic leader and his nuclear arsenal, the country itself has been enjoying a “fashion boom,” enthused one recent report on Channel One, putting Pyongyang “on a par with Milan or Paris.”
The Kremlin-controlled channel’s fashion scoop was just one of a series of upbeat pieces about North Korea that have been appearing in the Russian media this year - coinciding with a noticeable uptick in Moscow’s interest in the Korean peninsula’s hair-trigger standoff.
Traditionally, this has been a proxy battleground for the US and China - the key allies respectively of the two neighbors. But as in the Middle East, President Vladimir Putin is asserting a Russian role as well. “It’s a chance for Moscow to become an intermediary,” says Kommersant columnist Maxim Yusin, “to strengthen its position in the region and the world.”











