Comparison of Perspectives on the Body and Dress in Korean and Western Traditional Costumes

Abstract

This study investigates the concept of the body in Korean traditional costume by comparing the traditional costumes of the west and those of Korea while focusing on the relationship between the body and dress. In order to make a comparison of the traditional perspectives on the body in western and Korean costumes, this study examines the literature of history, art, medicine, philosophy as well as dress from the mid-fourteenth century to the nineteenth century pertaining to the west and those of the Joseon Dynasty Korea. Western dress assumes apparent formal structures and pursues overall harmony via the completeness of its entities, while traditional Korean dress subordinates the parts to the whole, emphasizing the organic total. Whereas the proportion of bodily structure is stressed in western traditional costume, in Korean costume the body is perceived as a whole. By revealing the body through the three dimensionalities of dress, the focus on the erogenous body parts is shifting in conventional western dress according to changes in aesthetic consciousness, which reflects the western ideas of objectiveness and self-centeredness. In traditional Korean dress, in the space between the body and dress, the emphasis is on planarization of the dress, which assumes the oriental relationship-centeredness concept.