Purple miniskirt

A wife sent her husband a text message asking, "What color represents me?" Tied up with work and without much consideration, he replied, "Red." A few minutes later, he received a message that said, "I`ll give you second chance. What color?" The question "What color represents me?" has grown popular among wives. Red means "just a wife and nothing else," orange "a girlfriend," yellow "a younger sister," blue "comfortable," navy "intellectual," and purple "sexy."

Lawmaker-elect Kim Jae-yeon of the minor opposition United Progressive Party was dressed in purple while attending the first session of the 19th National Assembly that opened Wednesday. She wore a purple miniskirt and a black jacket. Former party chief Lee Jung-hee would not have dressed like that. Lee entered college in 1987 and was nicknamed "red rose of progressives," but embraces an outdated fashion reminiscent of that of a female student activist in the 1980s. Kim started college in 1999 and has a totally different style. She is a new-generation metropolitan woman pursuing the "juche (self-reliance)" ideology.

The color purple symbolizes the progressive party. Kim must have been dressed in purple for this reason. Red represents progressive forces. The Red Devils were the nickname for the Korean national soccer team at the 2002 FIFA World Cup. People say the taboo on red was broken then. Nevertheless, then presidential candidate Roh Moo-hyun and his progressive Uri Party refrained from using red color. They instead used yellow, which is still used by the main opposition Democratic United Party. The now-defunct Democratic Labor Party used the color orange. Progressive parties could not use red but the ruling Saenuri Party uses it now.

Red represents passion. Married women hate it when their husbands say they represent red. Red means "just a wife" and nothing else. Why red has come to symbolize an old-fashioned color is a mystery and the ruling party uses it to represent itself. Former IT guru-turned-professor Ahn Cheol-soo, a rising political star, recently criticized color politics in a lecture at Pusan National University. Pro-North Korea forces also do not use the color red but purple, a combination of red and blue, or orange, a combination of red and yellow. Ahn needs to see the hidden intents of the colors purple and orange.

Editorial Writer Song Pyeong-in (pisong@donga.com)