Casual wear campaign begins for Seoul city workers

Will the Seoul Metropolitan Government’s “Cool Biz” campaign of allowing staff to wear casual clothing in summer change the fashion of the city’s civil servants?

Staff members at the Seoul City Hall’s Seosomun branch in the Jung district wore all different styles of fashion Friday, with some wearing a suit and tie and others short pants. Friday was the first day of the “Super Cool Biz” campaign that encourages employees to wear casual clothing to work.

Seoul Mayor Park Won-soon has urged civil servants to wear short pants and sandals in the hot summer months of June, July and August, and this instruction was conveyed to all city departments. Yet civil servants seemed to find it awkward to embrace the campaign.

Both male and female staff wore the same kind of attire that they would wear Fridays. Men wore polo shirts in lieu of dress shirts and cotton pants instead of slacks.

One civil servant said, “These days, I don’t usually wear tie. This is what I wear Fridays, and I paid no special attention to my clothing due to the Cool Biz campaign.”

Another said, “I`ve never thought that a civil servant could wear short pants. Many of my colleagues have said they cannot wear short pants because they don’t have one.”

Certain female staff wore short one-piece dresses or formal shorts.

Ranking officials were clad in dress shirts without wearing jackets. One senior staff member was wearing leather sandals.

A senior official said, “I was wary of what others wore and asked my colleagues yesterday whether they would wear short pants.”

The mayor’s aides and staff at environment-related departments took the lead in the campaign. Seo Wang-jin, special adviser for policy, was wearing white short-sleeved T-shirts and beige shorts when he arrived at his office around 7:30 a.m. He was also wearing casual shoes instead of dress shoes. “I was deeply impressed to see the Cool Biz policy in Japan last year,” he said, adding, “I`ve joined this campaign and it`s great because I feel cool.” Seo attended a meeting Friday wearing short pants.

At the Clean Environment Office of the Seoul City Hall`s Namsan branch in the Yejang-dong neighborhood, more than 50 staff members, including director-general for climate change policy Hwang Chi-yeong, were wearing short pants.

Noh Eun-joo, chief of the environment cooperation team, said, “I`m wearing shorts because we need to set an example as the staff of an environment-related department.”

Mayor Park will perform on the catwalk as a model at a Cool Biz fashion show Tuesday to display shorts. He reportedly has no plan to wear shorts during working hours, however.

kaki@donga.com