In Between Hanbok

In East Asian cosmology, the universe is perpetually shifting, as ten thousand things are woven together through the interaction of yin and yang. The Korean traditional garment ‘Hanbok’ contains such cosmological thinking as well as the cultural and technical characteristics of Korea. Especially, I find the Hanbok’s flat pattern, which only turns into a voluminous 3-dimensional shape in relation to the wearer’s body, and the environment captures the essence of traditional Korean clothing. After almost 150 years of sociotechnical and sartorial Westernisation, recently there has been a trend of reinterpreting Hanbok, even through digitisation. The boundaries between digital and physical blur in Seoul, as digital technologies are prevalent in every corner of the city. I closely follow this re-enchantment of Hanbok by becoming one of the wearers and makers of Hanbok. What counts as wearing in the digital realm? Through a short film depicting digital hanbok, I attempt to enrich anthropological practices by the ‘making’ of clothing.