I'd like to know what a modern hanbok would look like
Not the formal kind worn at weddings
Not the kind that float down a catwalk
The kind an everyday woman would wear
If she were going shopping
If she were going to work
If she were playing with her children
It would have to be machine washable, because there are busy women
It would have to be comfortable, because these are modern women
Maybe it wouldn't need a slip
But it would definitely have to work with sneakers --
After all, this is the twenty-first century
And these women would have had all this time
Evolving their fashions to their tastes
Under pain of beating or punishment or death
They had agency
They lived in a world that flowed with the currents of their times
And more than once altered those currents themselves
They remembered their halmunis laughing about the pictures they saw of other women,
From other places,
Wearing a hanbok but getting the bow all wrong
Sometimes it's the details
Sometimes it's the attitude
Because there were sometimes when those other women
Got it just right
And they were wearing the clothes
Not the other way around
Just as they -- we -- live in a world in which they lived with their history
And beyond it
Not that they lived for their history
As if they themselves were an offering to it
Sometimes the colors are vibrant
Sometimes the materials are subdued
Always, it is a garment that suits their lives
Not a costume to suit a role
This is, after all, a modern hanbok for a woman in a country that has always known agency
