By Andrei Lankov
Korea, like most countries in East Asia, embraced the Western suit with great enthusiasm. Every Korean urban street during rush hour testifies to the tremendous popularity enjoyed by suits and neckties which over the last few decades have become the uniform of the Korean middle class ― that is, of a majority of Korean males.
But only 130 years ago, the arrival of a Japanese envoy dressed in a Western suit was seen by Korean officials as an absolutely scandalous act. By dressing themselves in the manner of the ``barbarians,'' the Japanese dignitary denigrated himself and could not be seen as a civilized human being any more!
Back in the 1880s-90s, donning a Western suit was more a political statement than a fashion statement. By choosing the dress of the ``overseas barbarians'' over traditional attire, a Korean made it clear to everybody that he was on the side of modernity and Westernization, that he was against tradition and conservatism.
The young officials and students who were dispatched by the Korean government to Japan in the early 1880s were also the first to dress according to the then current Western gentlemanly fashion.
Some people insist that the most prominent leader of the reformist party, Kim Ok-kyun, was actually the first Korean to don such attire in public. There are other candidates, too, but all of them were members of the same faction of reform-minded young officials, which was known as the Enlightenment Party.
Incidentally, the sewing machine appeared in Korea before the Western suit. In 1877 a sewing machine was bought from some Westerners by a prominent Korean diplomat Kim Yong-won who was visiting Japan.
The sewing machine enjoyed great popularity, and until the 1960s remained a prestigious symbol, a sign of family affluence. Its prominence was important: with the exception of Western suits, most of the dress worn by Koreans until after the 1950-53 Korean War was home-made.
For Korean women a sewing machine was a great laborsaving device, and it is not surprising that they took it so seriously.
Until the mid-1890s a Korean man in a suit remained an unusual sight on Seoul's streets (and there were virtually no women in Western dress until 1900). The situation changed in 1895 when the surviving members of the Enlightenment Party came to Seoul again.
This time, they were backed with the power of the Japanese army and formed a puppet government. There was not much soul-searching, however, since in those times the reformers still saw Japan as a protector rather than as an aggressor.
One of the first laws issued by this new government was the notorious ``haircut act,'' which prohibited the traditional Korean topknots and required all males to cut their hair in Western style. Riots and strikes ensued, and the law was soon abolished.
As a part of the reform package, in 1895, a Western-style uniform was introduced for cadets in the military school. They were soon followed by soldiers and officers in the regular army.
From 1899 the Korean King Gojong (officially known as emperor by that time) began to appear in public clad in a Western-style military uniform, and from 1900 the official dress of civilian bureaucrats also was changed to a form of the Western suit.
This was not incidental: by promoting Western attire for the bureaucracy and military, Gojong and his advisers made clear that they favored modernization, and were ready to part with the Confucian past.
And where were these Western suits tailored? By 1900, Seoul had a number of tailors who specialized in this type of dress. Most of them were Japanese, which is not surprising: Japanese tailors were ubiquitous in the entire East Asia and the Pacific in the early 1900s.
Incheon, the major sea gate of the Korean capital, became the first place in Korea where visiting Westerners and Japanese (as well as adventurous Koreans) could order Western-style suits.
A Japanese tailor named Suenaga opened his shop there in 1884. Five years later, another Japanese tailor, by the name of Hanaka, began to ply his trade in Seoul, thus starting an industry, which is still flourishing today.
Korean tailors appeared a bit later, in 1895 when Paek Wan-hyok opened his shop on Jongno, central Seoul. Paek made Western dress for high officials and members of the royal family.
The Western suit continued its gradual spread during the colonial era. In the 1920s-30s Western dress was a sign of affluence as well as an indication of the participation in the new, modern economy.
It was worn by teachers, bank officials, and clerical workers of all kinds ― in short, by the growing but still very small Korean middle class. In the 1890s, the Western suit was a political statement, but in the 1930s it could be seen as a status symbol and status declaration.
A vast majority of Koreans continued to don the traditional hanbok, occasionally with some Western elements (for example, many wore hanbok with a Western hat). Only after the Korean War did men in suits and other Western attire begin to outnumber the hanbok-clad males on the streets of Seoul.
And what about women? Until the 1950s they overwhelmingly remained loyal to hanbok, too. Nonetheless, the first proponents of female Western dress appeared in the 1890s. They were mostly early Korean feminists, a very remarkable group.
Prof. Andrei Lankov was born in St. Petersburg, Russia, and now teaches at Kookmin University in Seoul. He has recently published ``The Dawn of Modern Korea," which is now on sale at Kyobo Book Center and other major bookstores. The book is based on columns published in The Korea Times. He can be reached at anlankov@yahoo.com.