The birth of modern fashion in Korea: Sartorial transition between hanbok and yangbok through production, mediation and consumption

Abstract

Abstract Sartorial change from hanbok (Korean dress) to yangbok (western dress) is commonly seen as marking the transitional Opening Port era of the late nineteenth century, when modern fashion emerged, seemingly replacing ‘traditional’ Korean dress with ‘modern’ western dress. However, when examining actual cases of Korean sartorial practice, this linear and dichotomous framework – non-western traditional versus western modern – has limits in its approach, lacking the multiplicity of local meanings and experiences in line with particular social and cultural contexts. This study instead explores the protean transition of dress and fashion in Korea as a way of challenging Eurocentric notions of fashion. In particular, it seeks a better understanding of the sartorial transition and local practice of modern dress and fashion emerging in colonial modern Korea through production, mediation and consumption. Critically reinterpreting diverse sources of object, image and text gleaned from the modern colonial period (1910–45), the framework of production–mediation–consumption builds up a rounded picture of the emergence of modern Korean dress and fashion that materialized through not only yangbok but also hanbok. Reflecting modern ironies of the time and the specificities of colonial society, the dichotomy between the two dress systems (hanbok and yangbok) was rather nuanced, multifaceted and intricately developed in relation to modern fashion, local modernities and the ways in which they evolved in the vernacular Korean context, across colonial and western fashion discourses.