S Korea to legalise miniskirts, hot pants

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Seoul: Hot pants and miniskirts will soon be legal in South Korea.

The country is in the final stages of revising an indecency law that prohibits people from wearing revealing outfits and was once enforced by ruler-wielding police during authoritarian governments in the 1970s, officials said.

"The law for excessive exposure does not match our current society," said Kim Jae-kwang, an official with the Korea Legislation Research Institute.

Under authoritarian rule, police could arrest or fine women for their fashion choices.

They also took scissors to men whose hair they felt was too long and tossed people in jail for unauthorised dancing.

The rules stayed on the books as South Korea moved to an open democracy in the late 1980s, but were no longer enforced.

Now miniskirts are about as common as traffic jams in the capital of Seoul and police have long given up on measuring the distance from knees to hemlines.