Whaddya mean, I love their hats! They fulfill the purpose of making the wearer look like a member of a paper tiger military regime.
You've probably noticed that the more impotent the dictatorship, the larger the hats and the stiffer the goosestep.
The last thing I'd want to see on a DPRK military officer is a normal hat, it would make them look dignified.
Their hats are hilarious, which is why I absolutely love them.
What's particularly amusing to moi is the fruit salad of both the NK and CCP military personnel. This includes officers and enlisted. In each of the NK and CCP armed forces your chest ribbons are based on years of service -- and your rank. It's explained below. While each NK and the CCP have combat ribbons to represent actual medals, neither armed force has been in any kind of actual war for so long that almost no active duty member has a combat medal. This includes of course being wounded in action. Nuthin.
Check out the chief of the PLA and his fruit salad. It looks like a neat pattern of repeating colors and designs drawn by the numbers in a prison art class by the criminally insane. You can take a closer look if you'd like but there's a closeup of the generals chest ribbons below and it is both identified and discussed.....
The closeup is of the general's fruit salad on his class A blouse so there's some lapel covering a couple of ribbons....
The general's ribbons were in seven rows, a number reserved for the highest ranking officers.
He wore a total of 21 [3x7] ribbons, although two were obscured by his jacket lapel. His ribbons included five one year service ribbons [the green ribbon with the central red stripe], two year service ribbons [the blue ribbon with two white stripe], at least three three year service ribbons [the beige ribbon with three red stripes], and four four-year service ribbons [the grey ribbon with four yellow stripes].
These length of service ribbons were arranged in a reapeating 1,2,3,4 pattern. The identity of the yellow ribbon with the star in the top row is not widely attested in the open literature, but officers typically wear a red or yellow ribbon in that location with one or more stars.
Here's another example of chest ribbons based on years of service and rank. This one is selected for display at random. The more years in and the higher rank you are, the more ribbons you get.
We can see the AF and the PLA officers have the identical years of service, i.e., identical ribbons and arrangement. The Navy officer has fewer years of service. The AF officer is a captain while the Army officer is a major. Unlike in the USA and in Western military forces in general, where there is a significant difference between captain and major, in the China armed forces there is not. The PLA Navy officer is a LT (equivalent to Army captain).
The gold braid/cord indicates assignment to the state official ceremonial unit. We can see the loser AF capt in particular sleeps in the identical position to include his eyes. At least the Army major expresses some personality -- indeed and as we can see, the major is not quite Han. That is, he's not a formal and blank carbon based unit only. The major's hands are relaxed rather than rigid which means his fingers are not extended downward against the seam of the trousers. The PLA Navy LT looks like he needs to set foot on an actual ship.