Grooming norms in Korean schools and workplaces, and how much they have loosened

Korean schools have historically regulated hair and cosmetics through written rules, while workplaces regulate appearance through unwritten ones. Both have loosened unevenly: student hair rules have been relaxed or dropped in a number of education districts, and legislation now restricts what employers may require about an applicant's appearance. The expectations did not vanish, they changed enforcement — carried by colleagues and habit rather than a rulebook.

School rules and how students worked around them

두발 규정 (dubal gyujeong), hair regulations, governed length, dyeing and perms, and makeup was often banned outright. Enforcement varied enormously by school, and periodic inspections are a shared memory for older Koreans. Students did what students do — tinted lip balm that passes as chapped-lip care, sunscreen, a light BB cream. Student rights ordinances in several education offices have since relaxed or removed hair rules, and a number of schools have quietly stopped enforcing cosmetics bans. Practice still differs school by school, so no single description of the current position holds nationally.

The interview and the résumé photo

면접 (myeonjeop), the job interview, developed its own grooming genre: neutral makeup, a specific conservative hairstyle, a suit, and a 증명사진 (jeungmyeong sajin) taken at a photo studio and retouched to convention. Legislation has since restricted employers from requiring appearance-related personal details on applications, and photograph requirements are far less universal than they were. The rule changed faster than the habit — the studios still do brisk business, and plenty of applicants still submit a photo because everyone else does.

What offices actually expect

It varies by sector more than any generalisation survives. Conservative finance, sales and customer-facing roles expect a groomed baseline: light makeup for women, clean-shaven for men, nothing surprising. Startups, creative industries and much of tech expect nothing in particular. Enforcement is social rather than formal — a remark from a manager, not a written policy. What is unremarkable across almost all of them is a sunscreen and a cushion compact in a desk drawer, for men as well as women, reapplied without anyone treating it as an event.

Where it is heading

Younger workers push back on appearance comments in a way that would have been unusual a decade ago, and unsolicited remarks about weight or skin are increasingly treated as a conduct issue rather than office banter. The direction of travel is clear even though the pace is not. For a visitor or someone working in Korea, the useful summary is that a groomed default is read as competence and preparation. That is worth knowing. It is not the same thing as it being required of you.

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✍️ Written & reviewed by the KoreaPlus Editorial team — dermatologist-informed, cosmetic-science researched & source-cited. Last reviewed: 2026-08-23.

General educational information using cosmetic structure-function wording — not medical advice. Always patch-test new actives. © KoreaPlus.