A sharp rise in 'Chinese emperor outfits' at Gyeongbokgung... A millennia-old tradition? First appeared in 2003 - 경향신문

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A man (left) wearing Chinese imperial attire at Gyeongbokgung and a woman wearing hanfu at Gyeongbokgung. Social media screengrab

While walking through Gyeongbokgung, you may at times encounter Chinese tourists in unfamiliar attire among visitors dressed in hanbok. With long trailing sleeves, wide hems, waist sashes, and ornate hairpieces, they look as if they have stepped out of a Chinese historical drama. Recently, even a man dressed in garb evoking a Chinese emperor was spotted walking along the Gwanghwamun Woldae at Gyeongbokgung.

The attire they wear is called hanfu in China. As images and videos of Chinese influencers wearing hanfu and shooting photos and clips around Gyeongbokgung and Gwanghwamun have been posted one after another, the issue has grown into a controversy. This is because the photos and videos they shot continue to be uploaded to Chinese social media such as Weibo and Xiaohongshu.

What exactly is hanfu, and why do Chinese visitors wear it even at Korean palaces? In Chinese characters, hanfu literally means clothing of the Han. It does not refer only to the Han dynasty as a specific ruling house; it refers to the Han people, Chinau2019s majority ethnicity.

Traditional clothing in China differed in form and name depending on the era. The attire of the Han, Tang, Song, and Ming dynasties was not the same. Each specific formu2014such as simui, yugun, po, wonryeongpo, and mamyeon-gunu2014also had its own distinct name.

What is even more noteworthy is that the term hanfu has not been widely used in the daily lives of modern Chinese for very long. Scholars in China generally view the starting point of the modern hanfu movement as around 2002 to 2003. In 2020, Yang Na of Guizhou University explained that the concept of hanfu began to be mentioned in 2002, and analyzed that the hanfu revival movement, which started in the early 21st century at the grassroots level, grew by using the internet as its base.

At the time, a debate unfolded on Chinau2019s internet over the question of what the ethnic attire of the Han should be. The trigger was the 2001 Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit. When the leaders of various countries wore matching Chinese-style outfits, the tangzhuang became known worldwide as if it were Chinau2019s representative traditional costume.

However, proponents of the hanfu movement did not recognize tangzhuang as the Han peopleu2019s traditional attire. They argued that this modern Chinese-style garment mixed in elements from Manchu clothing of the Qing dynasty. This gave rise online to the question of what the Han ethnicityu2019s traditional clothing actually is. Research on hanfu in China also explains that the movement to revive the Han peopleu2019s traditional clothing at that time served as the forerunner of the modern hanfu movement.

The person who brought that debate out from the internet into the streets was Wang Letian. On November 22, 2003, Wang, then a 34-year-old power worker, walked down a commercial street in Zhengzhou, Henan Province, wearing clothes he had made himself. He wore a top in the gokgeo-simui style with an outer coat over it. A simui is a long garment with the upper and lower parts joined as one, and gokgeo refers to a form in which the overlapping skirts wrap around the body in multiple layers. It is known that the outfit he wore was made with reference to ancient costumes depicted in the then-popular period drama <Daehancheonja>.

Some people on the street at the time even mistook him for Japanese. Chinese media reported that reactions such as saying a Japanese person had come wearing a kimono were heard about his outfit. A few days later, his appearance was covered by the Singapore Chinese-language newspaper Lianhe Zaobao, and as the photo and story spread on Chinau2019s internet, Wang Letian became a symbolic figure of the modern hanfu movement. Some Chinese media even commemorate November 22 as Hanfu Outing Day.

Analyses of the hanfu movement by Chinese researchers include a view of it as a Han cultural revival, as well as studies that define it as a Han nationalist movement of the internet era. In the early online communities of the hanfu movement, strong claims were made to regain the Han peopleu2019s ethnic identity and to revive traditional culture. Researcher Zhang Xiao described the hanfu movement as a nationalist social movement based on the internet, and other scholars also explained that hanfu developed into a means of expressing the Han peopleu2019s cultural identity and national consciousness.

Hanfu then exploded into popular culture. Among Chinau2019s younger generations, a culture of wearing hanfu to take photos against backdrops such as the Forbidden City, old walls, and historical sites spread widely. Pengpai News explained that hanfu began around 2003 when a small number of young people gathered online to discuss forms of traditional clothing and their historical basis. The hobby groups formed online extended into university clubs and local meetups, and in the 2010s the trend spread rapidly via social media such as Weibo, Bilibili, and Douyin, as well as through period dramas and game content. What initially had a strong cultural aim of reviving Han traditional attire gradually became consumed as photos, videos, and fashion goods, growing into todayu2019s mainstream youth culture.

The problem arises when the hanfu movement crosses borders and enters the historical spaces of other countries. In China, claims have repeatedly been made that not only hanbok but also uniquely Korean cultural items such as kimchi are part of Chinese culture. When a woman wearing the traditional costume of Chinau2019s ethnic Koreans appeared at the opening ceremony of the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics, controversy flared over whether this was an attempt to subsume hanbok into Chinese minority culture. This is why disputes over hanbok are not merely about clothing.

This perception is also evident on social media. In some recent Chinese social media posts defending a Chinese influencer wearing hanfu at Gyeongbokgung, claims have appeared that Korea took Chinese dress or that hanbok originated from hanfu. The fact that hanfu is being put forward as clothing symbolizing Chinese cultural identity while arguments circulate that seek to place other countriesu2019 traditional cultures within Chinau2019s sphere of influence is no trivial matter. When videos shot wearing hanfu at Gyeongbokgung, the main palace of the Joseon dynasty, intersect with such views, there is a possibility of creating cultural misperceptions that go beyond a touristu2019s choice of outfit.

Seo Kyung-duk, a professor at Sungshin Womenu2019s University, pointed out, "Our hanbok and Chinau2019s hanfu are clearly different outfits, yet foreigners could mistake hanfu for Koreau2019s traditional attire," and added, "It is an even bigger problem that Chinese influencers produce videos of themselves striding around Gyeongbokgung in hanfu and upload them to social media." He added, "Chinese influencers should first have 'global manners' that begin with respecting other countriesu2019 history and culture."