---
node: garment_hanbok
type: garment
slug: hanbok
title: "Hanbok"
lead: "The hanbok is the traditional dress of Korea, built from a short jacket (jeogori) and a full skirt (chima) for women or roomy trousers (baji) for men. Its clean lines, high waist, and vivid colours took their classic form in the Joseon dynasty."
published: 2026-08-10
updated: 2026-08-10
image_file: hanbok.jpg
image_source: "https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Hyewon-Yeondang.yeoin.jpg"
image_author: "혜원 신윤복 (申潤福: 1758-19세기 초반)"
image_license: "Public domain"
---

## Overview

A hanbok is an ensemble rather than a single garment: a wrap jacket tied with a long ribbon, worn with a high, full skirt or with trousers, and often an overcoat on top. It favours flat planes of plain colour, gentle curves, and a silhouette that hides the body's line.

## How it is worn

The jacket is closed left over right and tied with the otgoreum ribbon, the woman's skirt bound high under the arms so it falls in a bell, the man's trousers gathered at the waist and ankle. Colour and trim signalled age, season, and occasion rather than the cut, which changed slowly.

## History

Korean dress of jacket-and-skirt or jacket-and-trousers is very old, seen already in Goguryeo tomb murals, but the hanbok's familiar high-waisted, short-jacketed form settled in the later Joseon dynasty. Displaced by Western clothes in the twentieth century, it is now worn for holidays and ceremonies and freshly reinterpreted by designers.