상투는 언제 사라졌나?

Abstract

When did topknots, called sang-tu, disappear in Korean? People generally say it probably disappeared after the early 1930s because Imperial Japan had banned it as a policy at the time in colonial Korea. Is that true? The case of the movement for the improvement of living conditions生活改善運動 in the late 1920s calls for a reexamination of such academic understanding. This research is expected to help find internal causes of social changes in colonial Korea.
 It is true that Japanese Government-General of Korea weakened Korean traditional culture like topknots, white clothes, and so on after the wartime. But Chosun-ilbo(朝鮮日報), Shin-gan-hwe(新幹會) carried out the movement for the improvement of living conditions and campaigned short hair(斷髮) from the late 1920s to the beginning of 1930s and the attempts were partially successful. This shows the multi-layered causes of social changes in colonial Korea, related to Korean people’s demands as well as the policy intervention and physical forcing by the Japanese government-general of Korea.