Diplomats' fashion show sweeps Jinju

Tuesday, 11 October 2005
Wives of diplomats and officials of the 40 foreign embassies in Seoul participated in the 2005 Global Costume Festival held in Jinju, South Gyeongsang Province on Saturday (Oct. 8) to showcase their nations' traditional costumes and "hanbok," traditional Korean costumes.
During the three-hour fashion show, 60 women including 18 ambassadors' wives, who wore their traditional costumes, danced to the songs of their nations on the catwalk, receiving thunderous applause.
One by one, they took the stage, revealing the essence of their national cultures and delivering a short message in Korean to the audience, which numbered in the thousands. The poorer their pronunciation of Korean, the more applause they received from the citizens of Jinju.
After the traditional costume show, they came up on the stage again, this time clad in a variety of hanbok.
"Hanbok is a very unique costume, which I think reveals Korean beauty and elegance," Lyudmila Fen, wife of Uzbek Ambassador Vitali Fen said. "Whenever I wear hanbok, I can understand the beauty of Korea."
Julia Geier, wife of German Ambassador Michael Geier, echoed Fen's view and said she will wear hanbok on Germany's national day to show her love for the Korean costume.
The embassies which joined the event included Afghanistan, Austria, Belarus, Canada, China, Costa Rica, Cote d'Ivoire, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Finland, France, Germany, Guatemala, Honduras, Hungary, India, Italy, Kazakhstan, Laos, Lebanon, Libya, Mexico, Mongolia, Pakistan, Panama, Paraguay, Poland, Portugal, Qatar, Romania, Slovakia, Spain, Sri Lanka, Switzerland, Thailand, Britain, the U.S., Uzbekistan, Venezuela and Vietnam.
The Global Costume Festival and Jinju City jointly organized the festival to promote hanbok to the world through the diplomatic community and to promote Jinju as a "silk" city.