North Korea has intensified a months-long crackdown on what it calls “anti-socialist" behaviour, and breast implants are now at the centre of it. A sweeping state order has authorised neighbourhood surveillance, undercover sting operations, and hospital examinations to identify women suspected of undergoing banned cosmetic surgeries. Those found guilty face public shaming, labour camps, or worse.

The ban on breast augmentation, which authorities describe as a “rotten capitalist act," is part of a broader push by North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un’s regime to stamp out what it sees as foreign cultural contamination. A directive issued by Pyongyang’s public security department in July called for urgent action to stop the spread of “bourgeois customs" among young women, citing a surge in

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