Female students ask for larger uniforms

By Kim Jae-heun

Female students attending middle and high schools here can easily be seen wearing tight shirts with short skirts.

Some elderly people seeing them sometimes criticize them on the street.

However, many students say it is not their fault that they are wearing “too-tight” uniforms

“It is not like I want to show off my body. I feel extremely uncomfortable wearing a uniform that is too small in the first place,” said 17-year-old Kim Ji-eun, a high schoolgirl in Anyang, Gyeonggi Province. “I feel embarrassed too, wearing super tight shirts. People may think I shrank the size but this is the original size that was bought straight from the shop.”

Like Kim, many female students are unhappy with their school uniforms, which are made by major companies and promoted with skinny entertainers to show how students can have “good body shapes.”

The issue of discomfort with the uniforms, often called a “modern-version corset,” emerged earlier this year with a Youtube video clip that showed many middle and high schoolgirls' shirts were similar in size with shirts for seven-year-old children.

Such school shirts are not only tight but also short and flimsy, so dark-colored underwear can be seen through them.

Girls are dissatisfied at not only the uncomfortable shirts but also being forced to only wear skirts.

A middle schoolgirl said she wears skirt while going to school but changes into gym pants in her class.

“It is much more comfortable wearing pants and I don't have to mind about things that I do when I wear a skirt. But my school does not allow girls to wear gym pants. I hope anybody can wear pants regardless of gender,” she said.

Such discomfort has led many female students to contribute to a petition on the Cheong Wa Dae website calling for more comfortable school uniforms.

One of the petitioners, a high schoolgirl, argued that forcing female students to wear skirts and small-sized uniforms was sexual discrimination and an anachronistic practice. She added that it was a violation of human rights to make female students wear a certain type of school uniform.

Thousands of people have signed the petition.

Following this, President Moon Jae-in ordered Education Minister Kim Sang-kon to consider ways to change girls' school uniforms into more comfortable ones, at a Cabinet meeting in July.

The Seoul Metropolitan Office of Education (SMOE) also revealed a plan to promote a campaign to allow students to wear comfortable uniforms, an election pledge from Superintendent Cho Hee-yeon.

It set up a committee to deal with the issue, with members including office staff, students, parents and teachers.

The committee conducted a survey of 1,000 citizens starting Aug. 1 on their thoughts about students wearing comfortable uniforms, and will run a discussion session with 300 students. The SMOE will come up with guidelines on school uniforms based on the survey and discussion by November.