Gyeongbuk Maeil Sinmun | ‘Women’s Hanbok, Encountering the Modern Era’ — Special Exhibition at the Daegu Museum
Gyeongbuk Maeil Sinmun introduced the special exhibition 'Women's Hanbok, Encountering the Modern Era,' running at the National Daegu Museum through March 10. It reported that a work by Korean painter Kim Hyun Jung is displayed in the epilogue, paired with the Kim Hong-do and Sin Yun-bok albums in the prologue, offering visitors a chance to compare paintings of women in hanbok from tradition and the present day.
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The National Daegu Museum (Director Hong Jin-geun) is holding the special exhibition 'Women's Hanbok, Encountering the Modern Era' in Special Exhibition Hall 2 through March 10. The exhibition sheds new light on the hanbok worn by women in everyday life from the 1900s through the 1970s, and the stories of Daegu women woven into that hanbok.
On display are roughly 150 items — hanbok representative of each era and the accessories and materials that reflect the fashions of the time — ranging from the schoolgirl's hanbok uniform worn during the independence movement a hundred years ago, to the velvet skirts of the 1950s, and the lace jeogori and Arirang skirt-and-jeogori of the 1960s–70s.
In particular, the prologue presents, side by side, Kim Hong-do's 'Danwon's Album of Genre Paintings' (Treasure No. 527) and Sin Yun-bok's 'Album of Women's Customs' — works usually seen only in textbooks — while the epilogue displays a work by Korean painter Kim Hyun Jung, offering a special opportunity to compare and appreciate paintings of women in hanbok from tradition and the present day. It will also be a meaningful encounter to see a 1950s–60s-style wedding hanbok created by the late Lee Young-hee, a world-renowned hanbok designer from Daegu, alongside wedding photographs of Daegu and North Gyeongsang women from the period.
The exhibition is organized into three parts.
Part 1, 'Modern Women Attempt to Change Hanbok,' traces the transformation of women's hanbok across three periods — the 1900s–20s, the 1930s–40s, and the 1950s–70s — showing not only the era-defining hanbok that reveal changes in jeogori shape and fabric, but also related accessories and contemporary fashion magazines.
Part 2, 'Women's Hanbok, Strolling Through Modern Daegu,' introduces little-known stories of modern Daegu women and the hanbok woven into their lives. On a stage set up as the 'Daegu Women's Theater,' five women in hanbok recall major historical moments in Daegu, including the National Debt Repayment Movement and the March 8th Independence Movement, and share the stories of their time.
Part 3, 'Daegu Women Speak of Hanbok,' shares stories held in the hanbok and photographs of women from the Daegu and North Gyeongsang region, including the late Kwon Bun-sun, Lee Soo-eok, and Kim Gi-jun. In particular, Part 3 is a space built through the participation of citizens from the Daegu and North Gyeongsang region — faded photographs from family chests, gathered through a photo contest, will make this a precious space that turns personal memories into shared memories.