A Belfast barber shop has come under fire after placing an advert featuring North Korean leader Kim Jong-un and the words: "Don't have a bad hair day."

The sign outside Jay's Male Grooming Salon shows the dictator smiling broadly alongside the slogan.

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Belfast's Ulster Unionist Party (UUP) councillor, Jim Rodgers, called for the sign to be taken down amid concern that it might not "go down very well" in the busy shopping area of North Ireland's capital.

"I can understand where the owner is coming from, but with the track record of this individual I think it's most certainly in bad taste and will not go down very well in the area I grew up in," he told the Belfast Telegraph.

Jay Millar, the owner of the barber shop, said he had not received any complaints about the advert.

"There's actually a couple of kids have come in and a asked for that haircut, they're loving it. But it's not that far removed from the short back and sides everyone seems to like now," he said."It's all good-hearted banter and not something people should really be worried about."

Belfast dentist Conor O'Hare, who recently spent a week in Pyongyang, said the joke would not go down well in North Korea.

"There would be no such joke over there, definitely not," he told the newspaper. "They respect the leader and there's no jokes ever made about him. I'd say this would result in a big punishment in Pyongyang, but if I saw this sign in Belfast it would probably make me laugh."

The local reverend, Ken Higgins, saw the funny side of the poster. "I think it's more of a comedy thing," he said. "In my job you could choose to be offended every day by something or just ignore it."

"Besides, I don't think there's too many people from North Korea running around east Belfast somehow," he added.

Kim has captured the imagination of others as well. Earlier this month, a photoshopped image of a much slimmer Kim went viral on Reddit with the headline "Skinny Kim Jong Un would make the situation with North Korea more intimidating."

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