On Wearing Korean Traditional Clothing: Scoring big points with Buddhist nuns, senior citizens, and the Baha'is

Traditional Korean dress, uploaded on June 1, 2006 by stewils on flickr
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Our family has special interest in things Korean since we have been getting to know our neighbor Myong who has been studying the Faith with us. From Korea comes this blog entry from Lex. -gw

Today was the Baha'i Northern National Conference, any Baha'i who had the day off and wanted to hear all about last year's statistics and the growth of the Baha'i community in Korea could go. This year there were two conferences - one for the folks who live north of Daejeon and one for the people who live to the south.

I like these kinds of meetings. You get to hear the wrap up of the last year and receive a copy of all of the financial transactions and find out who moved into the country and out of the country and how many Baha'is died and were born, and who went on pilgrimage. It's an event worthy of getting dressed up for.

Korean culture has existed for thousands of years, as has Korean weather. So naturally, you would think that the best clothes to wear here would be the ones that have proven to be effective over the last 30 hundred years, right? Korean traditional clothing is beautiful and modest and made to suit the weather here. I love seeing old people wearing it around, not just for weddings. But that's it, ONLY old people wear it, and that's really a shame. I would love more people alive in Korea today to take stock of traditional Korean things that are really good and to not toss them aside just for the sake of modernity.

I am trying to live by the motto: Be the change you want to see. So, today I wore a blue linen dress and a traditional bamboo-cloth overshirt. First of all, this is the coolest overshirt in the whole world because it is big and boxy and stiff and has big sleeves and it is off-white and somewhat transparent, which makes it extremely cool. The rough weave of the fibers make any slight breeze intensified in the heat and it circulates air on hot days perfectly. And you know how I made all those cool pins, well I put 3 blue pins on the overshirt to make it look uber-fashionable and left the house not knowing what people would think. Like I said, Ive only seen people over the age of 65 wear stuff like this outside, and culturally, I had no idea how people would react to seeing an American in a traditional over shirt.

I am getting to recognise some of the people in my neighborhood, and one of the first people I ran in to on my walk to the subway station was one of my favorite grandmas. I think she might even be a great grandma. She's very old. When I saw her face light up with joy, I figured that I was safe. Most people on the subway under 50 pretended not to notice me, like usual, but everyone over 50 definitely took notice and 5 people even came up to talk to me, and one very old man even pinched my cheeks in a super-cute grandfatherly way. The Buddhist nuns were also quick to beam huge smiles at me, and in a land of very few huge smiles, I was really happy to see that.

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However, no one loved to see me wearing traditional clothes more than the Korean Baha'is.

That's me, over here in Seoul, wooing religionists and old ladies like usual.

Lex, "Scoring big points with Buddhist nuns, senior citizens and The Baha'is," Hello to you: the person reading this! I like you

{Re-posted with permission}