How the Hanbok Silhouette Changed

The frame of hanbok held steady for five centuries: jeogori (저고리), the short upper jacket; chima (치마), the wrapped skirt; baji (바지), the roomy trousers; and po (포), the outer robe. The lengths and volumes did not. Here is how the silhouette moved.

Early Joseon: long and roomy

Women's jeogori recovered from 15th and 16th century tombs are far longer than anything worn now. Excavated examples are sorted by length into danjeogori (단저고리, 40 to 60cm), jungjeogori (중저고리, 60 to 70cm) and jangjeogori (장저고리, around 80cm). Some skirts were cut jeondanhujang (전단후장형), short at the front and long at the back. A study of 48 examples from 18 excavation sites reads these as ceremonial skirts fashionable in the 15th and 16th centuries that thinned out during the 17th.

Late Joseon: narrow above, wide below

The shortening is usually dated to around 1537. It spread from the gisaeng (기생), the professional entertainers, and the body and sleeves narrowed along with the length. The scholar Yi Deok-mu wrote that sleeves were so tight that arms went numb and seams had to be unpicked to get the jacket off. Below the waist the opposite happened, with layers going on in order to build a jar-shaped outline.

• darisokgot (다리속곳), the innermost layer, changed often
• soksokgot (속속곳), a cotton layer against the skin
• baji, cut open at the crotch in late Joseon
• dansokgot (단속곳), worn over the baji to add bulk
• an underskirt to fill out the chima; upper-class women wore the mujigi (무지기), and royal women the daesyumchima (대슘치마) with formal dress

According to the National Gugak Center's encyclopedia of Korean traditional arts, by the opening of the ports the goreum (고름), the pair of ribbon ties, and the dongjeong (동정), the white collar strip, had both grown wider and longer. Exact measurements are disputed. The Encyclopedia of Korean Culture gives roughly 45cm under King Yeongjo, 26cm under King Jeongjo and 19cm in the 1890s and 1900s; other accounts run from about 81cm around 1580 down to 12 to 14.5cm by the 1900s. The direction is agreed on, the figures are not.

The opening of the ports: decree and schoolyard

Men's dress changed by decree. The Gapsin dress reform of 1884 required narrow sleeves of every rank and met fierce resistance; the Eulmi reform of 1895 put officials and commoners alike into a black durumagi (두루마기), the straight-collared overcoat, which became effectively the only outer robe.

Women's dress changed in schools. In 1910 Hanseong Girls' High School set a uniform of white jeogori with a black tongchima (통치마), a one-piece tube skirt. In 1914 a teacher named Walter at Ewha Haktang devised the eokkaeheori (어깨허리), a shoulder-strap waistband replacing the tie that bound the chest, and students carried it home each holiday until it was everywhere. The jeogori began to lengthen again in the 1920s and by the 1930s had settled at around 26cm, close to today's proportions.

Reformed hanbok to now

In the 1950s a button-fastened short-sleeved jeogori worn with a tongchima — a summer style started by Ewha Womans University's president and women faculty — spread among professional women. Such clothes were called gaeryang hanbok (개량한복, reformed hanbok) into the 1980s and saenghwal hanbok (생활한복, everyday hanbok) afterwards. Critics argued they bought mobility by dropping the git (깃), the collar band, and the seop (섶), the overlapping front panel. Hanbok Day was designated in 1996 and has been marked on 21 October since 1997; the Hanbok Advancement Center opened in 2014, with a sinhanbok (신한복), or new hanbok, development project among its first tasks.

What counts as hanbok today

Since 2013 anyone in hanbok enters the four main palaces, Jongmyo and the Joseon Royal Tombs free. The official rule asks for an upper and a lower garment together, with an overlapping collar on the jeogori; ties or buttons make no difference, skirts face no restriction on style, and trousers must follow the sapok baji (사폭바지) four-panel construction. A durumagi alone does not qualify, traditional and contemporary hanbok both count, and since July 2019 the hanbok of another gender counts too. Wearing a set yourself makes the whole sequence far easier to see.