International- Seoul's education board is removing a policy that requires female students to wear plain, all-white undergarments.
- A quarter of Seoul's girls'
schools regulate the color and transparency of students' underwear. - Seoul's government wants the regulations removed by the end of the year.
The Seoul Metropolitan Office of Education is forcing the city's girls' schools to ditch a mandate that requires female students to wear only plain, all-white undergarments.
As of this week, a 31 of Seoul's 129 girls' schools at the middle and high school level still had such a regulation in place, Seoul Metropolitan Council member Moon Jang-gil told local
Moon said the schools police the color, pattern, and transparency of their students' underwear, per each institution's code of conduct. This includes rules that penalize students who wear underwear that is not plain or white and punishments for wearing lacy lingerie.
Some of the guidelines listed in school regulations included: "Penalty points will be given to all types of underwear except for white patternless undergarments," "Lacy lingerie is prohibited" and "Blouses must be long enough that when raising one's arms, the underwear cannot be seen," reported Korea JoongAng Daily.
The Seoul Office of Education is asking the schools to either remove the regulations voluntarily or be forced to by the end of this year, per BBC Korea.
The policy change was precipitated by a survey conducted by Asunaro, a South Korean youth activist organization, earlier this year. The organization received more than 400 complaints from female students across the country about such underwear regulations.
Asunaro collected anonymous accounts from female students, some of whom said that schools allowing male teachers to inspect their uniform tops and check if they were wearing the correct underwear was both insulting and disturbing, per Hani News.
Other students said they felt violated and uncomfortable during extensive underwear checks, particularly in schools where female students' clothes were scrutinized to see if they were wearing bras of varying colors, Korean news outlet Yeoseong Shinmun reported.
A spokesperson from the Seoul Metropolitan Office of Education told the JoongAng Daily that before official pressure was applied to schools to get on board with policy shifts, it was difficult to get institutions to amend their school rules.
"While most public schools follow our announcement, it often gets blocked by the school principal, the board members, or the steering committee in private schools as there is no legally binding force," the spokesman told the JoongAng Daily.
But these girls' schools now have no choice but to acquiesce to the new government directive.
According to a report from Yonhap News, six of the remaining 31 schools that have such underwear regulations announced on Tuesday that they will be removing their underwear policy following talks with the Seoul education board.