Korean Culture Explained: Life, History, Music & Language | NowHitz · 7

What it held

Bandaji held clothing, books and rolled documents, as well as vessels for ancestral rites. Not every chest held all of these; its role depended on who used it and in which room.

Households that could not afford larger storage furniture used a bandaji instead, and it was an important part of a bride’s furnishings. Bedding placed on top made use of the space above the chest as well.

Regional styles

Wood, metal fittings, proportions and construction varied by region. Ganghwa, Pyongyang, Pakchon, Miryang and Jeju name regional traditions, while “sungsungi” refers to pierced metal ornament. The names overlap and do not form a list of separate types.

Ganghwa chests stored clothing, textiles and ritual vessels; some had shelves or small drawers, and their fittings include gourd, bat and taeguk shapes. Pyongyang chests are described as large and tall with abundant metal fittings, used for clothes with thick bedding on top; some have three small drawers inside the upper part. Pakchon chests are known for elaborately pierced ironwork, so even these two northern traditions differ.

Miryang chests are relatively low and wide. Gyeongsang-region furniture often shows more wood grain, but Miryang examples can carry comparatively plentiful iron fittings, including chrysanthemum-shaped nailheads and crescent-shaped handles, and records describe them holding clothes in the main room with bedding on top. Jeju chests stored books, writing materials and brass or ritual vessels. Researchers note similarities between some Jeju fittings and those of Jangheung and Haenam on the southwestern mainland.

Working metalwork

The metal fittings were functional as well as decorative. Hinges let the upper panel open, corner pieces reinforced joints and plates around the lock protected the wood from wear. Floral and geometric shapes gave each chest its own look.

The photos show four different museum objects: a Ganghwa bandaji (Seoul Museum of History, Seoul History 021990), a Jeju-gwe chest (National Museum of Korea, Geonhui 4556), a Jeolla bandaji (Geonhui 4539) and a Pyeongan-do sungsungi bandaji (Geonhui 4630). The name Jeju-gwe follows the museum catalog.

The furniture, fittings and patterns are unaltered; only the photo backgrounds have been standardized to light ivory. Individual examples should not be taken as representative of whole regional traditions.

King Jeongjo and chaekgeori

Chaekgeori, which became popular in the late Joseon period, depicts books together with ceramics, writing tools, flowers and fruit. Incheon Metropolitan City Museum traces the genre to paintings of Qing Chinese display cabinets and notes that King Jeongjo, who prized books, set chaekgeori as a subject in court-painter examinations.

Collecting and aspiration

Elite versions included imported objects, reflecting a taste for collecting alongside learning. As chaekgeori spread more widely, the paintings also came to express wishes for prosperity and peace.

Works at the National Museum of Korea

The National Museum of Korea’s Hongsan 465 is an eight-panel chaekgeori screen. Books, vases and vessels are spread across its panels, so the full screen and a single panel show different arrangements.

Sinsu 11431 is a separate work that gathers stacked books, a flowering tree and other objects in one composition. The final photo is a museum-supplied detail of one panel of Hongsan 465. The museum catalog does not give a production date for that screen.

An older shape in a new material

Rubber alone does not explain the shape of gomusin. According to the Encyclopedia of Korean Culture, men’s versions were modeled on gatsin, or leather shoes, and women’s on a type of danghye, a traditional low shoe. A National Folk Museum of Korea account also notes their resemblance to unhye, another women’s shoe.

The gently rising toe already appears in Joseon-period shoes, and factory-made gomusin carried that outline into rubber. Shapes varied, from broad and round-toed to slender with a pronounced toe.

A new manufactured product in the 1920s

Gomusin spread widely from the late 1910s through the 1920s, during Japanese colonial rule. Imports from Japan opened the market, and growing demand led to production on the Korean peninsula. The Joseon Rubber Works, founded in Seoul’s Jongno district in 1922, was one example.

Production centered on Gyeongseong, today’s Seoul, Pyongyang and Busan. Korean owners predominated in the first two cities, Japanese owners in Busan. The history of gomusin is one of urban factories, skilled workers and competing brands as well as rural memories.

Shoes for everyday wear

Straw jipsin wore out quickly and soaked up water. Rubber shoes resisted water and lasted longer, making them practical for daily wear.

Men and women wore gomusin as their everyday outdoor shoes. An Academy of Korean Studies photograph shows rows of white and black pairs left outside monks’ quarters at Haeinsa Temple.

The joy of new white shoes

In Jeong Bi-seok’s 1937 story Seonghwangdang, cited by the National Institute of Korean History, Sun-i delightedly tries on her new white gomusin again and again. The scene shows how precious a seemingly modest pair could be.

Gomusin combined durability with the pleasure of dressing well. Factory production brought outlines associated with leather and silk shoes into more people’s daily lives.

Different shapes and colors

Archival photographs show a broad black shoe, slender white pairs and a red-and-white version. Today’s colored gomusin build on an object that already came in different shapes and colors.

From around 1960, as sneakers and leather shoes became common, demand for gomusin fell. A once-new purchase became an everyday item and, later, a reminder of the past.

New Color Gomusin, 2019

Blank Project worked with Woosung Chemical to launch PVC “New Color Gomusin” in 2019. The official crowdfunding campaign offered three colors and styled them with jeans and skirts. As of October 2026, the official product page lists seven colors: Pale Banana, Emerald, Burgundy, Eden Green, Coral Leaf, Purple Rose and Old Glory Red.

The familiar curve and open instep remain, while color and clothing change the effect. A shoe that once put an old form into a new material has itself become a basis for new design.

Pollack at the ridge-beam ceremony

Bugeo is dried pollack. Accounts of sangnyang-gosa, a ceremony held when a house’s ridge beam was raised, describe hanging bugeo along with thread and money. The ceremony marked a major stage of construction and asked for good fortune.

A modern craft

Aekmagi means warding off misfortune. In a 2025 craft class, the Gumi Public Health Center had participants make a door ornament from a fabric fish, cord and a bell.

The images here are not photos from that class. They are AI-generated reconstructions of a dried pollack tied with thread and of a wooden fish ornament.

Ritual and ornament

The old ritual and the modern doorbell are different uses of the same motif. Both show how an everyday food found a place in expressions of care for a home. The ornament expresses a wish for well-being, not a promise of protection.

How norigae were worn

Norigae were attached to the ties of a hanbok jacket or the waistband of a skirt. An upper fitting or cord held the ornament in place, with its decoration and tassel hanging below.

A needle-case norigae has a small container for sewing needles built into its central ornament.

Why carry needles

The case kept frequently used needles within reach. According to the Korea Heritage Agency, needle cases were made of cloth, metal, leather or paper, and hair or powder was placed inside to prevent rust. The ornament held working sewing tools.

Examples in museum collections

The National Museum of Korea’s baekdong needle-case norigae, Jeung 6526, dates to the Joseon dynasty and measures 32.5 cm overall. A separate enameled example, Jeung 6666, measures 34.5 cm and has pink knots and tassels. Its Korean name, paran, refers to the enamel technique, not the color blue.

Two other cases shown here differ in material and form: a modern embroidered textile case at the Seoul Museum of History and a lacquered case at Dankook University’s Seok Juseon Memorial Museum. The Seoul museum describes the upper part of its textile case as a lid and the lower part as the needle holder.

The photos do not show the cases open or any needles, nor do they show those two cases worn with hanbok. The hanging tassel is decoration, not the needle compartment.

A ball of dough is pressed flat on a hot griddle. The edges spread thin, the surface turns golden and the sugar inside melts. Hotteok is a Korean street snack of wheat dough wrapped around a sweet filling.

By the 1920s, hotteok was already a popular food among ordinary Koreans. The Encyclopedia of Korean Culture notes that newspapers of the time published essays and short stories about hotteok and hotteok shops. A food bought as a meal or snack had entered both daily life and writing.

These records do not establish when today’s sugar-filled hotteok was first made.

Hotteok kept changing on Korea’s streets. Cooks fried it on oiled griddles, added cinnamon to the sweet filling, mixed glutinous rice into the dough or filled it with vegetables. The same name can describe very different textures.

Busan’s ssiat hotteok, or seed hotteok, is one example. Seeds and nuts add crunch and a nutty note to the sweetness. The Korea Tourism Organization describes it as a Busan street-food specialty made with pumpkin seeds, peanuts, almonds and walnuts, among other ingredients.

Part of hotteok’s appeal is the variety within a familiar taste. Dough thickness and fillings differ, and cities and shops add their own touches. A single pancake on a winter street carries the daily lives of those who make it and those who eat it.

Neolithic grinding stones

Grinding food with stone predates the round hand mill. The National Museum of Korea displays grinding stones and slabs from Neolithic sites including Amsa-dong in Seoul and Gadeokdo in Busan. A long stone was pushed back and forth across a slab, mainly, archaeologists believe, to process gathered plant foods.

These are not rotary maetdol. They do show that breaking down hard food was part of daily work long ago.

How a maetdol works

A maetdol grinds grain between an upper and a lower stone. Ingredients go into a hole in the upper stone, which is turned by a handle, and the ground material comes out the side.

Small mills called pulmae also ground rice for fabric starch or ingredients for pine-nut and sesame porridge. Wooden mills were used in mountainous Gangwon, and Jeju had large mills turned by four people. Size, material and use varied.

Making tofu

In traditional tofu-making, soaked beans were ground in a maetdol, then boiled and strained to obtain soy milk. A coagulant set the curds, which were pressed to drain the water.

One hand turned the handle while the other fed beans in with a spoon, and the ground beans collected in a basin below.

The Hoeamsa Temple Site mills

The same principle served larger kitchens. At Hoeamsa Temple Site in Yangju, each of two mills has a collecting basin and lower stone carved from a single block of granite. Large water tanks excavated nearby suggest the area was used for cooking.

The Korea Heritage Service tentatively dates the mills to early Joseon, when the temple flourished. Their large stone basins show the grinding method used on a scale fit for feeding many people.

What dadeumi was

Dadeumi was the work of beating washed fabric with wooden beaters. Starched cloth was straightened and smoothed so it could be worn again. A long, low stone called a dadeumi-dol supported the cloth.

Methods by fabric

The Joseon household manual Gyuhap Chongseo sets out separate finishing methods for silk, cotton and ramie. The work required knowledge of each fabric and took considerable time and effort.

A surviving stone

The National Museum of Korea’s Joseon-period dadeumi stone, accession Sinsu 13090, is 55 cm long. The photo shows the stone alone, without beaters or a worker. Washing was only one stage in the care of a well-kept garment.

A box for sewing tools

Making clothes took more than a needle and thread. Cloth had to be measured, cut, stitched and pressed, using rulers, scissors, thimbles and pressing irons. The banjitgori kept the smaller tools and pieces of fabric together.

In its entry on traditional Korean dressmaking, the Encyclopedia of Korean Culture lists sewing boxes alongside needle cases and thread holders as tools for organizing the work.

A compartment for needles and buttons

The National Museum of Korea’s Joseon-period sewing box, accession Sinsu 13353, has a small compartment in one inside corner. The museum identifies it as a place to keep needles and buttons separately from the larger area for thread and cloth.

The wooden box is 9.2 cm high and 36.5 cm on each side, finished in black lacquer and mother-of-pearl. Its shallow, open shape and divided interior make its function clear.

Paper and bamboo boxes

Not every banjitgori was elaborate lacquerware. They were also made from paper, wood and bamboo.

One paper-craft method built up thickness by pasting sheets together and was used for small containers, including sewing boxes. Leftover or used paper served as material, and colored paper could finish the surface.

Mother-of-pearl decoration

The opening photograph shows a different Joseon-period wooden box, Sinsu 13352. It is 9.7 cm high and 38.5 cm on each side, with mother-of-pearl on black and red lacquer.

Rocks, trees and fish sit within a circle on its inner base; flowers, birds, bamboo and rocks decorate the outside. Together, the two boxes show how the everyday work of sewing extended into storage and decorative craft.

A coin-shaped ticket

A bus token looked like a small coin but worked as a prepaid bus ticket. Passengers bought tokens at sales outlets, carried them and handed one over as the fare. Unlike money, it paid only for a specified transport service.

Paper coupon tickets were another option, bought in sets and handed over one per ride. Getting to school or work meant checking for tickets as well as cash.

1977 and the bus conductors

Seoul introduced bus tokens in 1977, when conductors on board helped passengers on and off and collected fares. Tokens cut the need to count out change on a moving bus.

Seoul’s museum and municipal histories also cite another reason: women conductors accused of pocketing fares were subjected to abusive body searches. The stated aim does not mean those abuses ended at once.

Student and ordinary fares

The Seoul Urban Life Museum says early ordinary-fare tokens were yellowish brass, while student tokens were made of a silvery alloy known as nickel silver. The type of token marked the fare category.

In Seoul, paper coupon tickets replaced student tokens in May 1979. There were initially separate coupons for elementary pupils, secondary pupils and university students, but university coupons were dropped in 1990, and university students began paying the ordinary fare.

Cities had their own histories

Seoul’s dates are Seoul’s history, not a national timeline. Other cities also used tokens and paper tickets. In July 2026, Busan’s city government announced a bus-history exhibition featuring its local tokens and coupon tickets.

That similar tickets existed in different cities does not mean passengers could use one city’s token in another.

Transit cards and Tmoney

Transit cards appeared in Seoul in 1996, and tokens were abolished there in 1999, so the shift to today’s Tmoney did not happen overnight. Tmoney’s own history dates the launch of Seoul’s new transit-card system to July 2004, followed by metropolitan integrated-fare settlement in July 2007.

More than the material changed. Electronic records allowed the system to link journeys and calculate fares across transport services.

From token to card

A token was surrendered for one ride; a rechargeable card holds a balance and can be topped up and reused. In an integrated fare system, recorded journeys also feed into the fare.

Tokens and paper tickets in museums preserve an older routine of buying tickets in advance, carrying them and taking one out to board. Paying with a card or phone today grew out of those changes in objects and institutions.