'Clothes key for research on int'l relations'

Choi Yeon-woo, a professor at the Korean Traditional Clothes Department at Dankook University, shows off a silk shroud at the Sangmyung Art Gallery in Daehangno, downtown Seoul, Friday. / Courtesy of Dankook University

By Lee Min-hyung

Choi Yeon-woo, 46, calls for more attention to traditional clothing as a major tool for research into the historical relations between Asian countries.

“Traditional clothing is not about what people wore, but an object for more thorough research to analyze the political and historical relations of neighboring countries,” said Choi, a professor at the Korean Traditional Clothes department at Dankook University, in an interview, Friday.

She said some experts have approached the matter from this perspective, as Korea has long-term close relations with China and Japan. But they have yet to reach satisfactory results, which is why she is pushing for a leap forward in the area.

She said she became interested in traditional clothing at an early age, as her hometown has a strong tradition of weaving ramie cloth.

“My hometown, Hansan in South Chungcheong Province, was named on the UNESCO cultural heritage list in 2011 in recognition of local weaving techniques,” said the professor. “That’s why I got familiar with the study of traditional clothing, so I earned master’s and doctoral degrees in Korean traditional clothing.”

In particular, she is running a project to correct a distorted tradition of wearing hemp clothes, which was passed down from the Japanese occupation (1910-45).

“People regard hemp clothes as part of our own cultural heritage,” she said, “but this is remnants of Japanese colonialism, so I decided to restore our traditional shroud in a modern way.”

The project comes ahead of the Independence Movement Day on March 1. The restored shroud will be exhibited at the university’s museum in Yongin, Gyeonggi Province, and an exhibition center in Seoul.

“Japan forced us to scrap our traditions in 1934, and the hemp clothes have since been thought of as our own,” she said.

A group of 15 professors, led by Choi, spent a year restoring the traditional silk shroud.

“We are going to continue our efforts to root out other clothing traditions from the Japanese colonial era, including wearing armbands or ribbons and decorating altars with chrysanthemum, which represents Japanese monarchy,” she added.