Classroom lesson 路 Hanbok - Korean traditional dress馃嚢馃嚪 South Korea

Hanbok - Korean traditional dress

Bright colours, simple lines, and a 1,500-year-old design

A model wearing a hanbok with a purple top and pink and silver skirt

Photo 路 Wikimedia Commons

What is it?

Hanbok (頃滊车) is the traditional clothing of Korea. People have been wearing versions of the same design for over 1,500 years. Most outfits have two main parts: a top, called a jeogori, with long sleeves and a small bow tied at the front; and either trousers (for boys) or a wide bell-shaped skirt called a chima (for girls).

Tell me more

A hanbok is designed to be loose and comfortable. The skirt is wide and floats away from the body, so the person wearing it can sit on the floor, kneel for tea, or run easily. The lines are gentle curves - no zips, no tight belts - and the colours are usually bright.

The colours mean different things. In old Korea, white was the colour that everyday people wore at home, while bright reds, blues, yellows and greens were for special days. The five 'lucky' colours - red, blue, yellow, white and black - represent the directions, the seasons and the elements. Today, lots of children wear small versions of a colourful hanbok at family parties and New Year.

Modern Koreans don't wear a hanbok every day - they wear regular clothes like everyone else. But on big festivals (like Seollal, the Lunar New Year, and Chuseok, the autumn harvest), grandparents, parents and children often all dress in matching hanbok and take family photos.

Around Seoul's palaces, you'll see lots of tourists wearing rented hanbok for the day. Wearing a hanbok inside Gyeongbokgung Palace lets you enter for free, and many visitors say it makes them feel like they have stepped 500 years back in time.

In the classroom

Walk your class through this in 15 minutes.

Talk together

Discussion prompts

  1. 01Do you have any clothing in your family that gets worn only on special days? What is it?
  2. 02Why might a country want to keep wearing the same kind of clothes for over 1,000 years?
  3. 03If you designed a 'traditional dress' for your own family - made today, for the future - what would it look like?
Try this

Classroom activity

Each child designs their own version of a hanbok on paper - a short top with a bow at the front, and either trousers or a wide skirt. They pick five colours to use, and write a short note explaining what each colour means to them (e.g. 'green for my favourite tree'). Compare designs as a class.