Where To Get Makeup Done In Korea For Wearing Hanbok
My mother has two sets of hanbok 한복, carefully stored in paper boxes. She has worn each of them exactly once—1 for my blood brother's wedding more twenty years ago and the other when a cousin of mine got married some x years back.
While I was helping organize her closet last year, she saw them and pinched the expanse between her optics in frustration. "I really should get rid of them."
"Why? They were expensive."
"Yeah, but where would I wearable it? And anyhow they are not in the current fashion."
I tin imagine an untold number of Korean households have this exact same chat at some point. Many older women own at to the lowest degree one gear up of hanbok—Korea'southward national costume—and most of them volition wear information technology on a handful occasions, if not just in one case.
Then it goes into the wardrobe, not to run into the calorie-free of twenty-four hours.
It's a sign of hanbok's status in contemporary Korea. Praised as a symbol of Korean culture, it's become a plush luxury shunned in everyday life. The government puts upwards a brave front as it touts hanbok'south beauty, but the industry complains of ongoing decline.
It might seem funny to take this discussion now considering that things have rarely looked so skillful for hanbok's prospect. The K-pop groups BTS and Blackpink donned versions of it for US comedian Jimmy Fallon's This night Show. At least before the Covid crisis started, foreigners in borrowed hanbok taking selfies at any number of palaces in primal Seoul were a mutual sight. Thou-dramas, many of which focus on history, showcase Korean traditional garbs to a global audience.
But among Koreans, who make up the chief customer base of operations, dressing in hanbok is a dying custom. Poor sales of the garment brand the news year after twelvemonth. A bride and groom might article of clothing it for the pre-hymeneals photoshoot, as do their mothers and some older female relatives at the nuptial. If the ceremony has a traditional component called pyebaek 폐백 (that's showing signs of going out of fashion), the newlywed will become into hanbok again for an hour, but that's it.
Not even major holidays similar Chuseok 추석 (the Mid-Autumn Festival) and Seollal 설날 (the Lunar New Yr) are excuses to bring out hanbok. I come beyond a question, asked online in 2008 by a adult female who says she longs to wear a hanbok on Seollal simply is afraid to considering of how other people might remember: "Non many people celebrate Seollal in hanbok these days, right? If I just did it, would it be over-the-tiptop?"
She had reasons to exist concerned. In 1994 less than 48 percent of Koreans wore hanbok even in one case in a year, and 55.4 per centum of them for Seollal, co-ordinate to Gallup Korea. In 2015 the same pollster determined that just ten percent had worn it for the holiday the previous year.
So hard information technology has go to find enough Koreans in the traditional costume that ane newspaper ran an amusing photo essay ii years agone showing just non-Koreans in hanbok on Seollal. "We captured foreigners on visits to Gyeongbok Palace (in central Seoul) in hanbok, which we Koreans are ignoring."
I happen to like hanbok and used to don it regularly xv years agone when I apprenticed to a Korean traditional trip the light fantastic master. She insisted that all her students wearable hanbok to do, and rather than changing at the studio where I was the only male pupil, I preferred to put it on at domicile earlier heading over.
The disturbed stares from other Koreans on the subway were intense enough to put a hole in my hanbok. Once a whole group of elementary school students trailed me, yelling, "Dosa-nim! Dosa-nim!" (It means a venerable spiritual master, but could equally imply a new-age religious figure of a dubious reputation.)
Why such prejudice confronting something seen equally inherently Korean?
Modern history of hanbok offers an respond. While various internet posts draw it every bit something along the line of "an integral role of Korean lives for centuries" or "the traditional attire of the Korean people", the name (한복 韓服) itself took off only at the plow of the last century to mean dress Koreans wear, different from non-Korean fashion. It's a significant development: previously Koreans had no reason to tell other Koreans that what they wore was Korean; the need to distinguish something as uniquely Korean arose because non-Korean civilisation started to flood the country.
That historical circumstance made hanbok a vehicle for national identity throughout Japanese occupation (1910-45) and beyond. (Really, the more than common way of calling Korean apparel during that time wasn't hanbok simply joseonot 조선옷—Joseon clothing—which is how North Korea refers to hanbok to this twenty-four hours.)
Later on the stop of Japanese colonial rule, which had imposed restrictions on Korean language and civilization, hanbok enjoyed a revival among citizens eager to express their new found independence. A children's newspaper in 1946 informed its readers that at the 1948 Summer Olympics in London "Koreans will proudly compete in Joseon clothing, fifty-fifty though in the past we competed in Japanese clothing."
A backlash could also be observed. The Seoul City Hall ordered its employees not to clothing hanbok on the ground that the costume "undermines the say-so of a regime office". A newspaper editorial behooved people to choose an alternative, i.eastward. Western fashion, saying hanbok "reduces your dignity".
This dynamic has been on display ever since. Hanbok stands for Korean national identity, so when nationalism is on the ascent, it comes back in style. But because information technology's so jump to the notion of tradition, information technology gets cast bated as old-fashioned or backward once the nationalist impulse subsides.
For hanbok has frequently been described in the mod era as existence inconvenient, fifty-fifty past Koreans themselves. Its color—often white or of a stake tone before stronger hues became the norm— gave rise to calls that people should be taught to dye it dark so clay doesn't evidence hands. Some other disadvantage is the design: all that volume makes it hard to carry out daily chores, and the complicated knots don't always stay in place.
Talking most 'reforming' (gaeryang 개량) hanbok for modernistic life has been effectually for decades, but attempts inevitably invite incredulity if not outright anger. Any change devalues this of import symbol of Korea, the traditionalists insist even today.
Not that hanbok has always stayed the aforementioned. Some—almost always older men with a nationalist, spiritual persuasion—walk around boldly in applied machine-washable cotton fiber versions (hence the random children calling me "a venerable spiritual master" on seeing me in hanbok). And equally my mother pointed out to me, the manner in faddy changes constantly. Minute differences in the length of the jacket, width of the sleeves and even the colour scheme can beguile whether the hanbok you are wearing is of the moment or so two years ago. A high-end hanbok professional person was frank in an interview final twelvemonth with a business daily: "hanbok likewise has trends. Afterward a year and a one-half it needs to be discarded."
Easier said than done when yous pay anywhere from hundreds of thousands to millions of Korean won for information technology, depending on the maker and the fabric used.
It makes sense that many immature Koreans in the 21st century say they shun hanbok for its discomfort, cost and difficult maintenance. (The phenomenon of renting a inexpensive one for prissy photos against historical backdrops is some other story.) The strong white collar named dongjeong 동정, which keeps the sweat of the neck from staining the jacket, must be sewn into place and replaced periodically. Certain decorative elements similar gold- or silver-foil prints can be tricky even for seasoned dry cleaners to deal with.
Nonetheless the link between hanbok and Korea is so inextricable in gimmicky discourse that even Northward Korea advertises its commitment to keeping the tradition alive, and that means of course that Southward Korea cannot fall behind in this effort, either.
Since March concluding year the last Wednesday of every month is a "hanbok-wearing 24-hour interval" at the culture ministry, and employees "voluntarily participate". Not-Korean women marrying Korean men lack no opportunity for wearing hanbok, then keen the authorities appears to integrate them into club by insisting that they learn a custom even an increasing share of the natives are shunning. Some schools prefer modified hanbok as their uniforms. Many young hanbok makers have earned the spotlight for trying to arrive mainstream (and kudos to them).
Information technology's an uphill battle, only in that location is some other, more promising market on the horizon. "Some say information technology's easier to find dogs in hanbok than children in hanbok," reported the daily JoongAng on Tuesday. The pet hanbok manufacture is growing while need for children's hanbok is falling continually.
And why not. Better that some are wearing hanbok than nobody at all.
Cover: Young Yong Kwon via flickr (CC By-NC-SA ii.0)
Source: https://koreaexpose.com/hanbok-korea-national-costume-history-and-decline/
Posted by: hongacers1978.blogspot.com
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