(WSK)The Magical Beauty of Hanbok

There are many things that may represent Korea. One among them is the Korean traditional dress “hanbok.”

Although nowadays few people wear hanbok except on national holidays like New Year’s Day, the beauty and elegance of the garment is always amazing.

Stitch by stitch, making a beautiful hanbok takes great craftsmanship, effort, and passion. It depends on how you choose the right combination of colors among infinite possibilities; how you cut, fold, stitch up patches of cloth together; how you sew patterns onto it, etc.

Hanbok has some magical quality about its color and texture that even the modern digital technology can’t really simulate on the screen.

Patterns of flowers and butterflies sewn into the cloth radiate the artist’s craftsmanship and subtlety. Wearing hanbok, you can just feel the artist’s heart oozing out of it. There are no fixed set of rules or formula to follow in making hanbok. How the garment is rendered is solely at the discretion of the hanbok-maker.

Hanbok takes into account the wearer’s body shape, comfort, and beauty, all at the same time. It is one of Korea’s greatest assets containing its people’s indelible, age-long wisdom.

Despite the garment’s much fallen popularity among people nowadays, the passion and perseverance of hanbok artists endures.

Hats off to the hanbok makers – protectors of one of the most precious Korean assets.