I'm dating myself by admitting this, but my father and I used to argue about the length of my hair. This was back in the 1960s, a few years after the Beatles made their American debut on the Ed Sullivan show.

I really, really wanted to be John Lennon, or at the very least, to look like him. I'm not sure why. Probably because the Beatles - in both their movies and in real life - always had girls chasing after them. Even at age 13, that seemed like a lifestyle I could learn to appreciate.

So I grew my hair. By today's standards, my little fringe of bangs wouldn't qualify as long at all, but in 1965, baby, I was considered a real hep cat. This, according to my folks, was a bad thing.

My "Beatle" haircut really did help attract the ladies, though; the "ladies" in question being 13-year-old girls who also thought the Beatles were cool.

My dad, especially, hated my haircut and rarely failed to mention this fact whenever he got mad at me, which was pretty much hourly. Regardless of the nature of my transgression, my hair was at least partly to blame. Every so often pop would get really cheesed about something and drag me off to the barber for a buzz cut in the hopes that this would completely alter my personality, straighten me out and get me to fly right. It never did.

The nice thing about hair is, it grows back. (Knock on wood; as I approach yet another birthday I realize this may not forever be the case. But so far so good.)

Anyway, with the passing of the ‘60s, ‘70s and all the decades since, hair has more or less become a non-issue for most Americans.

When my daughter died her hair blue, I barely raised an eyebrow. When my oldest son spiked his hair and my younger son grew a (gasp!) mullet, I didn't look twice. These days, no one cares.

Not in America, anyway.

But in North Korea ... oboy! There, they have hair issues big-time, owing mostly to that country's doofy communist leader, Kim Jong Il. Jong Il - a man known the world over as having the only haircut goofier than Donald "You're Fired" Trump's - not long ago decided the only good commie is a well-groomed commie.

The North Korean government is currently waging a major public relations battle with longhaired citizens, calling them "unhygienic anti-socialist fools."

In taking the word to the street, Jong Il has gone so far as getting his own dorky, bouffant-style locks trimmed to more closely conform to the communist ideal (no longer than five centimeters).

Being a product of the American educational system, I haven't a clue what a centimeter is (one of those many-legged bugs?) but I'm guessing a hair length of five of them wouldn't help you land a job as front man for the "Poison" or "Twisted Sister" reunion tours.

Pundits say Jong Il is trying to get all the men in North Korea to look more like soldiers in his 1.1 million-member Korea People's Army, the "loyal backbone" of Jong Il's rule. (That army is also the reason more people don't make fun of Jong Il's hair, at least to his face.)

As part of Jong Il's anti-hair campaign, state run television stations are airing advertisements claiming long hair hampers brain activity by preventing oxygen from getting to the nerves in the head.

According to many western scientists and cosmetologists, this notion is - to quote the experts - "stupid."

The ad campaign fails to mention why it's OK for women to wear their hair long. Apparently, in North Korea at least, it's all right for women to be a little dumber than men, though how anyone of any sex could be dumb enough to believe Jong Il's clumsy propaganda campaign is beyond me. (Then again, I grew up bombarded by Pepsi and Coke commercials, so I've been brainwashed by the best!)

Jong Il isn't the first tin-pot dictator to focus on hair length, however. Just across the border, in South Korea, the late dictator Park Chung-hee banned both miniskirts and long hair. This was way back in the 1970s, though, and he was trying to combat "declining morals" among the country's youth.

Chung-hee, it should be noted, was murdered by one of his own top-ranking officers.

I wish I'd had this little fact to share with my old man back in the days when he was still dragging me off to the barber. He might have reconsidered.

To contact Mike Taylor with your questions, comments, or styling tips, e-mail mtaylor@midmich.net or write via snail mail to: Mike Taylor, c/o Valley Media, Inc., PO Box 9, Jenison, MI 49429.