Presidential fashion: Park delivers powerful yet feminine image

President Park Geun-hye’s official visit to the U.S. drew the attention of even those normally indifferent to politics. It was the first overseas trip by Korea’s first woman president and the public was eager to see how she would present herself to the global audience.

And it seems that Park has developed her own way of wearing powerful suits and feminine hanbok, or traditional Korean dress.

Starting with a gold-green silk jacket with a turquoise mandarin collar, paired with brown trousers, the outfit worn to disembark from the airplane on Sunday, Park stuck with the combination of a mid-thigh hitting jacket and formal trousers. The jackets came in various colors, mostly soft, stripped of patterns or other ornaments. Perhaps at her most important appearance, the summit meeting with President Barack Obama, Park wore a periwinkle jacket with black trousers.

Park wore hanbok at her meeting with Korean-Americans living in New York on Sunday, the Smithsonian Museum dinner on Tuesday, and a meeting with Korean-Americans in Los Angeles. The hanbok worn at Tuesday’s dinner was an unusual combination of colors and patterns. The jacket featured large colorful flowers all over while the skirt came in jade. This was worn under a translucent cream-colored durumagi, or long outer coat.

And of course, all the looks were matched with sensible medium-heeled shoes and her signature up-do, something she adopted from her late mother after she took on the first lady’s role upon her mother’s assassination in 1974.

“Park has a certain strength equivalent to that of men. And she knows how to accentuate it by wearing trousers and Chinese-collared shirts and jackets. When she met U.N. Secretary-General Ban, she wore an olive green jacket, which showed her interest in eco-issues as well as delivering her willingness to participate in ‘saving the earth,’” said Lee Jin-ha, CEO of fashion consulting firm, The Image.

Lee said Park’s choice of periwinkle at her summit meeting with President Obama showed her willingness to communicate.

“Park’s choice of a cream hanbok showed her maternal side (though she has no children) when she met fellow Koreans living abroad. It was as if she wanted to console their loneliness and embrace them. I think Park knows how to use color, what to conceal and what to show off in order to reflect a certain image,” she said. 

By Bae Ji-sook and Lee Woo-young
(baejisook@heraldcorp.com) (wylee@heraldcorp.com)