• Journal of the Korean Society of Costume
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• v.64 no.1
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• pp.152-164
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• 2014

Korean people have revered the white color and enjoyed wearing white clothes. Various kinds of white clothes have been worn by the Korean people, ranging from everyday wear(便服), and scholar's robe(深衣) for the upper class, to religious costumes like Buddhist monk's robe(僧服), shaman costumes(巫服) and costumes for ancestral rites(祭服), or mourning(喪服). There have been many differing opinions by historians regarding the background of this Baekeuihosang(白衣好尙, the preference for white clothing) tradition and even now, it is frequently being discussed. This study aims to consider and discuss the background of this Baekeuihosang tradition, focusing on Chang-seon Yoo's Baekeuigo(白衣考, the consideration of white clothing), which was published in Dong-A Ilbo in 1934. The purposes of studying literature such as the Baekeuigo is to analyze the arguments on the origin of Baekeuihosang, to analyze Chang-seon Yoo's claim of its origin, and to discuss the culture of Baekeuihosang. Chang-seon Yoo claimed that the existing discussions on the background of Baekeuihosang based on the lack of dyes, or undeveloped technique, economic privation and national control strayed from historical facts, according to literature review. It is not worth discussing the farfetched arguments such as the use of costumes for ancestral rites as everyday wears, or the nation of sorrow. Baekeuihosang tradition mostly originated from the effects of many religions and the taste for innocence, or naturalness. White clothes were infused with the sorrow and emotion of Korean people and were also worn to show resistance to foreign power as symbols of ethnicity. Therefore, there should be a new view of the discussion of white clothes and Korean aesthetic sense, away from the logic distorted by the Japanese colonial view of history.