한국 전통 상복과 현대의 상복 변화에 관한 연구

Abstract

Today it's not difficult to come across a good number of valuable cultural assets being made light of or ignored, which is never considered trivial. Among the many items of cultural heritage, it's also important to preserve and pass down the traditional Korean mourning garments. The mourning ceremonies have been regarded as the most grieving and solemn element of passage rites, being extremely complex and refined in terms of procedures. Our ancestors under the influence of Confucianism placed the most importance on the ceremonies of mourning among the four major ceremonies of one's life, which included the coming-of-age, wedding, and religious ones in addition to the mourning ceremonies. They were thorough with following the complicated and difficult procedures of the biggest ceremonies and reflected their sadness and grief in their mourning garments that they wore for a certain period of time, believing that they were fulfilling the filial duty by doing all those requirements. Entering the modern era, the Korean society started to simplify the related ceremonies simply mistaking them as the origin of all the formalism and to replace the traditional mourning ceremonies with the new simple process of handling the dead body based on indifference. Even though the western culture has penetrated deep into the Korean society, where the traditional order has gone through huge revolutionary steps and the Confucian ideas have their social roles reduced to a great degree, the potential impacts of Confucianism cannot be underestimated with the ideas engraved in the consciousness of the Koreans. Thus this study intended to investigate the traditional Korean mourning garments and examine what kind of changes were introduced to the mourning garments in the modern times. In addition, the problems with the modern changes, if any, were identified, which were followed by solutions suggested.