Abstract
This study aims to investigate the changes in the Wedding costume for Paebak(Hyunkugorye) in Westernizing Korean society of the twentieth century. For this study, I analyzed the related literature for the first half of the twentieth century due to the lack of relevant photographs, while I used the method of content analysis of 116 photographs for the second half of the twentieth century. It is obvious that bridegroom and bride wore the same clothes for Hyunkugorye and the formal wedding ceremony in the early twentieth century. According to the analysis of photographs, wonsam was rather more widely used than hwalot as the bride's wedding costume in the late twentieth century. But there were many changes starting from the early 1970s. The changes were deviated from the traditional style and became more decorative and somewhat crude: that is, people began to embroider wonsam and the piping was added to the collar of danryung. All these changes resulted from the pursuit of commercial interests with the misunderstanding of and the indifference to traditional beauty, while Korean society had experienced the Japanese rule of Korea, the Korean War and the industrialization during the 1960s and 1970s. Therefore, to establish appropriate wedding culture and costume in Korea, it is important to educate people who get involved in wedding business for traditional wedding culture and clothes, because nowadays . most of bridegrooms and brides borrow ceremonial costume for Hyunkugorye.