What a cap covers, and what the hair does first

The notes are a walk through Korean dress culture: how men’s official caps and hairdressing changed from antiquity through Unified Silla to Joseon. They define gwanmo as the general name for caps and hats that cover the head, and dusik as the way the hair is dressed. The sangtu, the man’s topknot, is treated as the base on which a cap is worn. A typo in the notes, 생화양상, is read as 생활양상, a way of life: caps here are not only weather gear, but a mark of status and role, and at times a prestige good, shaped both by neighbouring systems and by forms Korea kept as its own.

For the early kingdoms they list types — the byeon, jeolpung, chaek, nagwan, and geon — and a sangtu seen in Goguryeo tomb murals, without a full account of how each was built. Unified Silla, they write, uniquely has gold crowns, which the notes link to luxury, and they also list daegwan, mogwan, and the bokdu, of Chinese origin and later worn by officials after unification. King Heungdeok’s sumptuary law is named as a frame for what could be worn. This reading leaves those early names as the notes list them, and does not invent a construction the unique does not give.

Cloth caps, and a horsehair one in a portrait

The detailed unique is mostly Joseon. The bokgeon, they write, is of black cloth, with a rounded top, long flaps at the rear, and ties at the sides, and is closely tied to Confucian scholars. The yugeon is a students’ cap: bag-like, the sides folded, the top seam laid back, the ears left free. It is also called minjageon. A typo, 축젱서, is read as 축제에서: it is still worn, they say, at a hyanggyo or at festival rites.

In a portrait of Kim Man-jung they describe a chungjeonggwan, also called a jeolcheopgwan, of horsehair, with a double structure: an inner rectangular naegwan, and outer pieces that sit as lower rectangles. The notes place this among official or formal caps, as the portrait shows it, without stretching the name into a type they have not seen.

Rain caps, a mid-stage toward the heungnip, and boys in chorip

In a genre painting by Kim Jun-geun they describe a bangnip, or banggat: bamboo on the outside, wanggol on the inside, with ties under the chin, worn against rain and sun. The pyeongnyangja, or paeraengi, was once widely worn, then, after various rules on official hats had settled, became a lower-class cap — for mourners, for rain work, for yeokjol, for bobusang, and for baekjeong. It is of coarse split bamboo, and the notes treat it as a mid-stage toward the heungnip. The natural colour is kept; yeokjol black-lacquered theirs; bobusang added a fist-sized cotton tuft on the crown.

The chorip, they write, follows a similar path toward the heungnip. In one place the notes say the crown end is rounded and the brim gentle; in another, that the crown end is cut flat and the brim straight — both are left as the notes write them. When the heungnip appeared, the chorip became commoners’ wear; it is also worn by a gadong with yungbok. A choripdong, they add, is a boy after the capping rite who wears a chorip until he takes the heungnip. Caps here mark who a man is, and what work he does, as much as they keep off the rain. The same Korean report, at fuller length, is on CampusDown.

Sources

1. The notes, a student reading of Korean men’s official caps and hairdressing from antiquity to Joseon.

Last updated: 15 November 2026