Chapter XV: How the People of Korea Dress

Sometimes, returning to Seoul from over the hills, we stopped at a shaded spot to look down upon and _listen_ to the city which spread far and wide in the valley below. Did you realize that different cities have different voices, just as people do? Seoul’s voice is rather quiet, except that there is a constant rat-a-tat, rat-a-tat, reminding one of an automobile engine with too much carbon in its cylinders. You can hear that rat-a-tat all day long, Sundays almost as much as week days, more or less of it even at night—not only in Seoul but all over Korea, wherever many people live. I am sure it will surprise you to learn that this noise is made by the women ironing clothes! The ironing is done not with flatirons but with sticks that look like small baseball bats.

Among grown-up Koreans, the everyday clothes are white, in winter as well as in summer. In the islands of Japan and in China to wear white means that one is in mourning, and this used to be the case in Korea. But because the Korean people were expected to mourn for three years not only after a member of their family had died, but after the death of each royal person, the wearing of white came to be habit with them. (Now, for mourning, the Koreans wear a light brown coarse cloth.) In winter the white garments are padded with cotton, like our quilts. Children, especially girls, sometimes have bright garments of green, pink, and other gay colors. But their parents and other adults almost always dress in white—farmers as well as city dwellers. If it were not for variety provided by their hats, and by the dress of Japanese and foreigners, a Korean crowd would look like a snowdrift.

This is the way the women and girls iron clothes in Korea. You can
hear the pounding of these small baseball bats or policemen’s
billies in any town day or night.
]

Always “Spick and Span”

White clothes are so easily soiled that a great deal of washing is necessary. The Korean housewife does not care so much about her own appearance as she does about her husband’s. When he goes out into the street, to squat on his heels with his cronies and smoke his pipe, she would be ashamed if his long coat and his baggy trousers were not at least as clean as those of her neighbors’ husbands. So every day you will find her down at the bank of the river, or at the edge of some little pond, washing clothes by pounding them with a flat stick like the Englishman’s cricket bat. The dull thump-thump of this pounding is not so noticeable as the rat-a-tat of ironing, but it is just as familiar a sound in Korea.

Wash day in Korea. Korean women wash their clothes, and especially
those of their husbands, by beating them with wooden paddles on flat
stones on the bank of some stream or pond.
]

Most of the white clothing of the Koreans is made of what we call grass cloth—woven from the fibers of a kind of wild pineapple leaf. I do not suppose it is really easier to iron this cloth by folding it over a roller and beating it, but the Korean woman still clings to her bats when she could have flatirons if she wanted them.

Although the national dress is not one of the really important things about any country or people, travelers are almost sure to notice strange costumes first. They could not help doing so in Korea, for in some ways the Koreans dress more oddly than any other people on earth. In summer many of the men keep their thin white garments away from the body by wearing rattan underwear! They have an undergarment shaped like our vests, long detached cuffs, and a high collar much like the ruffs worn in Queen Elizabeth’s day, all made of splints, loosely woven. Japanese and foreigners who have tried this basket underwear say that it is very cool, but I did not try it.

Sometimes the Korean costume does not quite meet in the middle, though
it must be snowy white if the wearer is not to be considered a very
low person, indeed.
]

The very loose white trousers, which may be bound close about the ankles with black bands, are covered by a long garment called the _turamaggie_. It is the tails of this that probably give the Korean wife the most washing and ironing to do, for whenever the husband squats down to gossip with his neighbors he spreads the _turamaggie_ out behind him without always picking a clean spot. The women wear a very short waist and a long skirt that is pulled up under the arms. Formerly all the better class women covered themselves from head to foot in a great white cloak out of which only an eye peeped as they made their way through the streets.

Some of the country boys of Korea still wear their hair long and in a
braid, as all men formerly did until they were married, when it was
put up in a topknot.
]

Queer Hats

I have left to the last the most astonishing part of the Korean costume, the hat. The women do not wear any, except sometimes a kind of straw parasol when working in the rice fields. The boys, we notice, often have their hair cut. But that is a very recent custom, brought in by the Japanese and foreigners. A few years ago no boy in Korea ever thought of letting anyone cut his hair, and in the country districts he often does not yet. Many a Korean mother has wept and many a father has been very angry when a son, returning either from Japanese public school or from one of the schools of the Christian missionaries, has appeared with short hair.

The old Korean on the left is wearing the horsehair hat which most men
in Korea still wear, in the belief that it will protect their
topknots from evil spirits. The Korean on the right, by wearing a
big straw or bamboo-splint hat, shows that he has lost a relative
within three years. In Western lands, the parallel of this custom is
the wearing of mourning veils by women who have recently been
bereaved.
]

So precious was the braid of hair once worn by all Korean men and boys, and still very general among the men, that a special hat was contrived to protect it. As soon as he was engaged to be married, often by the time he was fifteen, the Korean boy’s braid was twisted into a tight knot four or five inches high, standing upright on his head. At the same time a wide black band was placed so tightly about his head that at first the boy had an all-day headache. This band is not something to put on in the morning and take off at night or indoors. It is put on “for keeps,” and the great majority of Korean men wear one to the day of their death.

Over the topknot which many Korean men still have goes a funny little skull cap, and above that a hat shaped much like the high silk hat that Western men wear with formal evening dress. But the Korean “plug” hat is much too small for the head and has to be held on by a string under the chin. Both it and the skull cap are made of loosely woven horsehair, so that they look like fly traps made of mosquito screening. There is a narrow brim on the hat, not wide enough to shade the face. Most Korean faces are burned a deep brown by the cloudless summer sun, especially those of the men and women who toil in the rice fields.

The fact is that the Korean hat is not for the same purpose as our hats. It is worn merely to protect that precious topknot from the evil spirits which, according to the Koreans, are always flying through the air, though they cannot be seen. If he were to hear a radio, I am sure the Korean peasant would believe the sounds came from those unseen spirits. Since the hat is a horsehair screen, the topknot can always be seen, so that the owner need never worry about its safety. Many Korean men, especially of the cities, now have short hair, but most of them go on wearing the queer hat, just as we keep up old customs after the reason for them is forgotten.

You can easily imagine how queer it looks to see farmers who are wading up to their knees in the paddy-fields, or threshing their rice with flails much like ours, or carrying a load on their backs on a wooden framework called a _jicky_, dressed in white clothes topped by a high black hat. Yet they are seen all over Korea. The white garments and the “plug” hat are worn even by a blacksmith at his forge and by the teacher of the old fashioned Korean school at his desk. In fact, Korean men become so used to these hats that they wear them even while they sleep, pillowing their heads on a brick or a stone that does not interfere with them.

There are other queer hats in Korea, though few by comparison. When a man is in mourning, he wears a hat much like a bushel basket, clear down over his face, so that others shall not see his grief, which is supposed to last for three years. The farmers sometimes wear another hat almost as big, as a protection against the blazing summer sun. Until a few years ago, the girls of some parts of the peninsula were supposed to hide their faces modestly under immense hats. When entering a church they used to pile up these hats outside, covering the ground about the building. At the other extreme in size, is the rainy day hat-parasol, yellow in color and about as big as a quart jar, though cone-shaped. Every Korean man carries one of these, folded up to the size of a ruler, and whenever rain threatens to ruin his precious horsehair hat he slips this tiny waterproof parasol over it. The rest of him does not matter, for the thin white garments will soon dry out again.

If it rains the least bit, out comes the yellow waterproof hat-parasol
which the Korean man carries folded up.
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