Park the fashionista
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By Kim Tae-gyu
President Park Geun-hye is known to prefer an inconspicuous palette of pastel tones for her wardrobe that includes long skirts.
Now, the first Korean woman head of state is changing her style but not baring more.
Park wears vivid primary or secondary colors to add a contrast to her signature colors of green, brown and khaki, which experts say represent an air of dignity and charisma.
She wore a khaki military-style jacket to take her oath in front of some 90,000 at the National Assembly on Feb. 25. On the next day, she wore a green jacket, which she also wore frequently for official events.
The 60-year-old has typically selected bright outfits when she wanted to deliver hope to the nation’s people.
Park wore a red jacket last December in a visit to the Seoul bourse as a presidential hopeful, during which she promised she would boost share prices by 50 percent during her term.
When she met children at an elementary school in downtown Seoul in March, her choice was a light-grey jacket with pink mandarin collar. In a letter-reading ceremony with citizens on inauguration day, she wore Korean traditional clothing of a red silk hanbok jacket over a bright blue under-dress.
Earlier this month, Park donned a sky-blue jacket when she visited a facility for the disabled. The color was also her choice for a meeting earlier this week with managing editors of newspapers and television news.
“She has favored bright colors when she jockeyed to offer a message of hope to people,” Park’s long-time aide said.
Park opts for achromatic or dark colors in serious circumstances such as emergency gatherings aimed at dealing with North Korean threats after the Stalinist regime’s nuclear test on Feb. 12.
When Park met leaders of the governing and opposition parties just after the atomic test, she was dressed in a grey jacket with black lapel and looked solemn.
Park wore a dark-green outfit on March 4 when she issued a statement to urge the National Assembly to promptly pass the government reorganization bill so she would able to complete her Cabinet.
She was enraged back then because her nominee for the Ministry of Science, ICT and Future Planning - former Bell Labs head Kim Jeong-hoon - stepped down a day earlier because of the parliamentary impasse.
As Park highly regarded Kim as the perfect fit to lead the science ministry, which she thinks is most important to achieve her goal of a “creative economy,” she strongly expressed her frustration and resentment.
While she presided over a meeting of security-related ministries Friday to discuss North Korea’s tentative closure of the inter-Korean joint industrial complex in Gaeseong, she wore a grey jacket