Korean Job Discussion Forums

[MUOhio82]

Ok seriously, I keep hearing about it, but how bad is it REALLY?

[weatherman]

To me Korean fashion for women is dressing nice, cool, or even sexy. But then hiding that fashion under layers of ugly pieces and/or a huge handbag.

[bogey666]

[ds_fan]

yip, on women its good, dare i say hot. on men oh dear god. they couldnt look any camper, skin tight, bright colors and childrens logos of micky mouse. when shopping if often asked where the mens stuff are, not realising that im standing in the middle of it.

to be fair though, everyone disses korean fashion, they are a very fashion consious country where appearance is everything. if you look in an expensive clothes shop in the middle of london, i.e a super expensive one where posh ass rich southern students hang out, you will find the same stuff, only average joe, which would include 99.999percent of boardys here wouldnt even think twice about wearing.

[ryouga013]

The fashion can be quite hideous sometimes, but I have no fashion sense, This means that I go semi casual and try not to look completely sloppy and that's all i care about. I have yet to find anything worse than the gold elf shoes, white jeans, neon pink with gold lettering shirt, big amber sunglasses, dyed orange brown hair with permed mullet-man that I saw in Japan at the university I studied at.... that was simply horrible... that and the fact he was trying to look macho...

[Chris Kwon]

Like America, the fashion just depends on the individual, some know how to dress right, some can't dress for shiit and some have extreme swagger. I won't be directing my comments about men in this post, but as far as women there are a lot of well dressed sexy women. However most of them lurk in Gangnam, Sincheon, Hongdae, and areas like that. It can be day and night in those areas just mentioned compared to other areas.

As for the hideous fashion, I can't stand the girls with the random baseball caps which don't match at all with their outfit. I always wonder why they picked the random hat they picked too, for example why did this girl pick the ugly green Oakland A's hat to go with her pink shirt and orange skirt?

Also I see a lot of weird color stalkings that don't match the outfit either. It seems some people just don't know how to color coordinate.

Japanese women can also have some weird and ugly fashion too, but IMO their style is better overall than Korean women.

Also I think it's ironic when some of the expats here are the ones who make comments about bad fashion here as a lot of them look out of style in their own countries. A lot of hippy looking, creepy or dirty looking westerners here who are the butt of the fashion jokes back home now telling other people they look bad. This doesn't apply to everyone, especially people in the military as most of them look 'normal' to me, unlike the average english teacher here. No offense to those people.

[bogey666]

[MUOhio82]

Hmmm, these are interesting things to know.... as for me, I'm 5'10, and my wardrobe consists of some nice jeans, some high heels, and lots of tank tops, although I've been hearing tank tops not so cool over there...

And only 2 suitcases allowed, would it be wiser to just ship the winter clothes in the fall, because I'm thinking yes?

I'm assuming clothes (unless Asians have DD's) and shoes are going to be quite hard to find here?

5 weeks left, and I'm just now starting to get stuff together, putting as much music as possible on my laptop, and getting photo albums together...

I've seen some pictures of Korean men and what THEY wear though, WHAT is going on with that?!

As always, I embrace everything with a big laugh and a shrug of the shoulders...

[Chris Kwon]

MUOhio82 get you one of these https://www.spacebag.com/spacebag

You can find it at Target or Walmart.

[Vagrantlest]

People seem alot more fashion concience than atleast most parts of the US. Its alot like Japan but a little more "Hip Hop," if you can get what im saying.

I really like the random baseball caps : (

[Scotticus]

[Grab the Chickens Levi]

Young, 20 - 30's Koreans genrally dress VERY smartly, even with their casual wear. It will be perfectly ironed and SPOTLESS...

Whereas they do wear NICE clothes and the clotes fit well, and are very smart and clean the word of the day is - BORING. VERY Preppy.

The clothes may be fashionable, but they make thm seem boring and dull and mostly they all look the same. Kind of how the girls have amazing bodies but do not seem s3xy or sensual in the slightest....

40 - 50 year olds have the most attrocious fashion sense I've ever seen and that's coming from a guy from an English council estate who's used to going to car boot sales amongst the great white middle aged working classes on sunday afternoons...

Korean adjuma's wear golfing sun visors, chunky gold earrings and bracelets, michael jackson syle jackets with HUGE shoulder pads and mabe a pair of mountian hiking leggins.... I no longer take a second glance at 40 - 50 yr old guys wearing neon green suits or a pair of pvc pants and a silver dinner jacket.... LMAO....

[ciccone_youth]

LOL about the ajumma fashion, soooo true!! ^^

yea, tank tops are considered "slutty" here.
(but not miniskirts paired with high heels).

i wear tank tops all the time anyways. i won't change that.

[excitinghead]

Please forgive the blatant plug for my blog, but I've written a lot on Korean women's attitudes to fashion recently that readers of this thread might find interesting. I'm also (hopefully) presenting some of them as a paper at a Korea Studies conference in Fukuoka in September, so I'd really appreciate some feedback on them before then, especially from women!

http://thegrandnarrative.wordpress.com/2008/03/19/womens-bodies-in-koreas-consumer-society-part-1-their-neo-confucian-heritage/
http://thegrandnarrative.wordpress.com/2008/03/26/womens-bodies-in-koreas-consumer-society-part-2-were-not-in-kansas-anymore/
http://thegrandnarrative.wordpress.com/2008/04/04/womens-bodies-in-koreas-consumer-society-part-3-final-nation-family-self/

They're all very long, but the gist of them is that Korean women generally choose the fashions they do explicitly because they want to look the same as everyone else. They might not say that to their Western friends, because they know that we wouldn't approve, but that's definitely what they say to each other, surveyors, and Korean academics.

Japanese women too:

http://thegrandnarrative.wordpress.com/2008/05/09/japanese-women-like-being-told-what-to-do/
http://thegrandnarrative.wordpress.com/2008/05/14/japanese-women-still-like-being-told-what-to-do/

Their attitudes to dieting, exercise, and cosmetics are related too:

http://thegrandnarrative.wordpress.com/2008/04/10/korean-women-part-1-dating-and-body-image-updated/
http://thegrandnarrative.wordpress.com/2008/04/15/korean-women-part-2-exercise-and-cosmetics/
http://thegrandnarrative.wordpress.com/2008/04/26/korean-women-part-3-final-a-caucasian-ideal/

Thanks in advance!

[KYC]