Research
What the people of Gojoseon, Buyeo, Goguryeo, Baekje, Silla and Gaya wore: crowns and feather caps, gold, dress and armour, as the tombs, the murals and the dynastic histories show them.
At a glance
| Gojoseon to 108 BCE | Buyeo 2nd c. BCE – 494 | Goguryeo 37 BCE – 668 | Baekje 18 BCE – 660 | Silla 57 BCE – 935 | Gaya 42 – 562 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Men’s head | Topknot | Hats trimmed in gold and silver abroad | Jeolpung cap; two feathers for office | Black silk cap; silver flowers for officials, gold for the king | Silk or birch-bark cap with gold wings; Tang cap after 649 | Cap with feather-like metal ornaments |
| Crown | — | — | Gilt-bronze, flame openwork; king’s white silk cap with gold | Gilt-bronze peaked caps; gold flame ornaments on black silk | Gold: 出-shaped trees, antlers, jade, spangles | Gold: plant-shaped uprights |
| Men’s dress | Local dress (record names it, does not describe it) | White wide-sleeved robes and trousers | Trimmed jacket, wide trousers, white belt, yellow shoes | Much like Goguryeo; king in purple and blue brocade | Jacket and trousers; Tang robes from 649 | Clean clothes, long hair, fine broad cloth (Byeonhan) |
| Women | — | — | Pleated skirt; trim at hem and sleeves | Robe-like dress; one braid unmarried, two married | Braids wound round the head with silk and pearls; Tang dress from 664 | Gold and glass-bead earrings and necklaces in the tombs |
| Rank shown by | — | Furs: fox, sable | Cap colour (blue, crimson) and feathers | Robe colour (purple, crimson, blue) and belt colour | Robe colour (purple, crimson, blue, yellow), capped by bone rank | Grave goods: crowns, armour, iron |
| Armour | Bronze daggers; little armour survives | — | Lamellar to the knee; armoured horses | Lacquered lamellar | Lamellar; horse armour (Jjoksaem) | Riveted plate cuirasses, then lamellar; horse armour |
Crowns관
Silla’s gold crowns are the best known: a headband with three uprights shaped like the character 出 (stylised trees) and two shaped like antlers, hung with comma-shaped jade (gogok) and hundreds of gold spangles that shiver when the head moves. Long pendants hang at the temples. Six have been excavated, all from great mound tombs in Gyeongju of the fifth and sixth centuries.
Whether they were worn in life is still argued. In the tombs they sit low, around the face, with the pendants on the chest, and the sheet gold is thin. Many scholars read them as funerary or ceremonial, worn over an inner cap of birch bark or silk.
Gaya’s gold crown (attributed to Goryeong) uses plant-shaped uprights instead. Baekje and Goguryeo crowns survive mostly in gilt bronze: Goguryeo openwork flame patterns, Baekje tall pointed caps from its Hanseong era, and the flame-shaped gold ornaments of King Muryeong that pinned to a black silk cap.
- Goguryeo
Old Book of Tang (舊唐書) 199, Eastern Barbarians: Goguryeo唯王五綵，以白羅爲冠，白皮小帶，其冠及帶，咸以金飾。
Only the king wears the five colours. His cap is white silk gauze, his belt a narrow one of white leather, and both cap and belt are ornamented with gold.
- Baekje
Old Book of Tang (舊唐書) 199, Eastern Barbarians: Baekje其王服大袖紫袍，青錦袴，烏羅冠，金花爲飾，素皮帶，烏革履。
Their king wears a wide-sleeved purple robe, trousers of blue brocade, and a black silk cap ornamented with gold flowers; a plain leather belt and black leather shoes.
From museums and tombs 13 Photographs of real objects and murals.
Not pictured here Gold crown attributed to Gaya (National Treasure 138)Leeum Museum of ArtGilt-bronze cap from Ipjeom-ri, IksanNational Museum of Korea
Painted for the story 5 Made for this book in its own style from the evidence above. An interpretation, not evidence.
Feather caps and bird wings조우관과 새 날개 장식
The everyday cap of a Goguryeo man was the jeolpung (折風), a small peaked cap tied under the chin. Men with office pushed two bird feathers into it, one each side, so their rank showed from across a yard. Chinese envoys noticed it in every century, and foreign painters drew it: two men with feathered caps and ring-pommel swords stand among the ambassadors on the seventh-century walls of Afrasiyab in Samarkand.
Silla and Baekje carried the same idea in metal. Silla tombs hold gold ornaments shaped like a pair of bird wings or a butterfly, made to slot into the front of a cap. Baekje officials of the sixth rank and above wore silver flower ornaments on black caps, and the king gold ones.
The two feathers were pheasant or similar long tail feathers, set upright or swept back. In the murals they move with the rider.
- Goguryeo
Records of the Three Kingdoms (三國志), Wei 30, Eastern Barbarians: Goguryeo大加主簿頭著幘，如幘而無餘，其小加著折風，形如弁。
The great lords and chief registrars wear a headcloth like the Chinese ze, but without its back flap; the lesser lords wear the jeolpung, shaped like a bian cap.
- Goguryeo
Book of Zhou (周書) 49, Foreign Lands: Goguryeo其冠曰骨蘇，多以紫羅爲之，雜以金銀爲飾。其有官品者，又插二鳥羽於其上，以顯異之。
Their cap is called the gol-so, mostly made of purple silk gauze and ornamented with gold and silver. Those who hold office also push two bird feathers into it, to set themselves apart.
- Baekje
Book of Zhou (周書) 49, Foreign Lands: Baekje若朝拜祭祀，其冠兩廂加翅，戎事則不。
At court audiences and sacrifices, wings are added to both sides of the cap; in war, not.
From museums and tombs 11 Photographs of real objects and murals.
Not pictured here Baekje silver flower cap ornamentsBuyeo National MuseumSilla birch-bark capsGyeongju National Museum
Painted for the story 6 Made for this book in its own style from the evidence above. An interpretation, not evidence.
Gold on the body몸의 금
A Silla aristocrat was buried dressed in gold: earrings with thick or thin rings and hanging leaves, necklaces of gold and glass beads, bracelets and finger rings on every finger, and a gold belt hung with pendants of tools and fish, jade and tweezers that probably once marked what the wearer commanded.
Baekje’s goldwork from King Muryeong’s tomb is finer and lighter: flame-shaped cap ornaments, hairpins, earrings with long chains, and gilt-bronze shoes with spiked soles meant for the grave.
Gaya earrings and crowns follow their own forms, and Buyeo men, a Chinese visitor wrote, decorated their hats with gold and silver when they went abroad.
- Buyeo
Records of the Three Kingdoms (三國志), Wei 30, Eastern Barbarians: Buyeo在國衣尚白，白布大袂袍、袴，履革鞜。出國則尚繒繡錦罽，大人加狐狸、狖白、黑貂之裘，以金銀飾帽。
At home they prefer white: wide-sleeved robes and trousers of white cloth, and leather shoes. Abroad they prefer silk, embroidery, brocade and wool. Great men add furs of fox, white monkey and black sable, and ornament their hats with gold and silver.
From museums and tombs 18 Photographs of real objects and murals.
Painted for the story 2 Made for this book in its own style from the evidence above. An interpretation, not evidence.
Men’s dress남자의 옷
Across all six kingdoms the base is the same northern riding dress: a jacket (yu, later jeogori) to the hips, crossed at the front and tied with a belt; wide trousers gathered at the ankle; boots or leather shoes. Over it, for rank or weather, a long coat.
Goguryeo murals show the jacket edged at the collar, cuffs and hem with a band of another colour (the 襈 the histories mention), trousers loose and wide for the great and narrow for workers, and spotted or patterned silks for the rich. Baekje men dressed, the Chinese said, roughly like Goguryeo’s.
Silla kept this dress until 649, when Kim Chunchu came home from Chang’an with Tang court robes and the court adopted them. From then on, Silla officials look like Tang officials in round-collared robes and soft black caps.
- Goguryeo
Book of Zhou (周書) 49, Foreign Lands: Goguryeo丈夫衣同袖衫、大口袴、白韋帶、黃革履。
Men wear jackets with sleeves of one width, wide-mouthed trousers, a white leather belt and yellow leather shoes.
- Silla
Book of Liang (梁書) 54, Silla其冠曰遺子禮，襦曰尉解，袴曰柯半，靴曰洗。
Their cap they call yujarye, their jacket wihae, their trousers gaban, their boots se.
- Gojoseon
Records of the Grand Historian (史記) 115, Joseon滿亡命，聚黨千餘人，魋結蠻夷服而東走出塞。
Man fled into exile with a following of more than a thousand. He tied his hair in a topknot, put on the dress of the barbarians, and went east beyond the frontier.
From museums and tombs 5 Photographs of real objects and murals.
Painted for the story 1 Made for this book in its own style from the evidence above. An interpretation, not evidence.
Women’s dress여자의 옷
Women wore the same jacket, often longer, over a skirt (chima) that reached the ground. Goguryeo murals show skirts finely pleated and banded in stripes, jackets edged with a contrasting trim at the collar, cuffs and hem, and sometimes trousers beneath the skirt.
Hair said who you were. Baekje girls wore one braid coiled on the head with a single tail hanging down; married women wore two. Silla women braided their hair and wound it round the head, threaded with coloured silk and pearls. Goguryeo ladies in the murals wear tall coiled hair or a headcloth.
In 664 Silla’s court women followed the men into Tang dress: the high-waisted long skirt, the short jacket and the shawl you can see on the seventh-century figurines from Yonggang-dong.
- Goguryeo
Book of Zhou (周書) 49, Foreign Lands: Goguryeo婦人服裙襦，裾袖皆爲襈。
Women wear a skirt and jacket, both hem and sleeves edged with a band of trim.
- Baekje
Book of Zhou (周書) 49, Foreign Lands: Baekje婦人衣似袍，而袖微大。在室者，編髮盤於首，後垂一道爲飾；出嫁者，乃分爲兩道焉。
Women’s clothes are like a robe with slightly wide sleeves. A girl at home braids her hair, coils it on her head and lets one strand hang behind as an ornament; a married woman divides it into two.
- Silla
Book of Sui (隋書) 81, Eastern Barbarians: Silla服色尚素。婦人辮髮繞頭，以雜綵及珠爲飾。
They prefer plain undyed dress. Women braid their hair and wind it around the head, ornamented with coloured silks and pearls.
From museums and tombs 6 Photographs of real objects and murals.
Painted for the story 3 Made for this book in its own style from the evidence above. An interpretation, not evidence.
Rank and colour관등과 옷 색
Every court dressed its ranks in colour. Silla’s law of 520 gave purple to the five highest ranks, crimson to the next four, blue to the next two and yellow to the rest, with ivory tablets for the purple and crimson. Bone rank capped how high a man could climb, so a robe’s colour also told you who his ancestors were.
Baekje used purple for the sixth rank and above, with silver flowers on the cap, crimson to the eleventh and blue to the sixteenth, and belts coloured by rank. In Goguryeo the cap carried it: blue silk gauze for the noblest officials, crimson for the next, the two feathers for all who held office, and coarse brown cloth for everyone else.
In 649 Silla traded its native court dress for Tang robes, and in 650 it began dating its documents by the Tang emperor’s era name. The colours stayed; the cut changed.
- Silla
Samguk Sagi (三國史記) 33, Treatise 2: Colours of Dress法興王制：自太大角干至大阿飡紫衣，阿飡至級飡緋衣，並牙笏；大奈麻、奈麻靑衣；大舍至先沮知黃衣。
King Beopheung’s law: from Taedaegakgan to Daeachan, purple robes; from Achan to Geupchan, crimson robes, both with ivory tablets; Daenama and Nama, blue robes; Daesa down to Seonjeoji, yellow robes.
- Silla
Samguk Sagi (三國史記) 33, Treatise 2: Colours of Dress眞德王在位二年，金春秋入唐，請襲唐儀，太宗皇帝詔可之，兼賜衣帶。遂還來施行，以夷易華。文武王在位四年，又革婦人之服，自此已後，衣冠同於中國。
In Queen Jindeok’s second year, Kim Chunchu went to Tang and asked to adopt Tang ceremony. Emperor Taizong granted it and gave him robes and belts. He came home and put it into practice, trading the native for the Chinese. In King Munmu’s fourth year the women’s dress was changed too, and from then on caps and robes were the same as China’s.
- Baekje
Old Book of Tang (舊唐書) 199, Eastern Barbarians: Baekje官人盡緋爲衣，銀花飾冠。庶人不得衣緋紫。
Officials all dress in crimson and ornament their caps with silver flowers. Commoners may not wear crimson or purple.
- Goguryeo
Old Book of Tang (舊唐書) 199, Eastern Barbarians: Goguryeo官之貴者，則青羅爲冠，次以緋羅，插二鳥羽，及金銀爲飾。國人衣褐戴弁。
The noblest officials wear caps of blue silk gauze, the next of crimson gauze, with two bird feathers and ornaments of gold and silver. The common people wear coarse brown cloth and a peaked cap.
From museums and tombs 7 Photographs of real objects and murals.
Painted for the story 5 Made for this book in its own style from the evidence above. An interpretation, not evidence.
Armour갑옷
Two kinds of body armour meet on the peninsula. The older, made in Gaya and early Silla in the fourth and fifth centuries, is the plate cuirass: long iron strips or triangles riveted into a rigid shell, worn with a helmet of riveted vertical plates. Gaya’s iron made it the arsenal of the south.
Lamellar replaced it: hundreds of small iron plates laced in overlapping rows, flexible enough for a rider. Goguryeo murals show whole lines of cavalry in lamellar to the knee, with horses in lamellar barding and face plates, the armoured horse (gaema) the histories feared. Silla and Gaya tombs have yielded real horse armour.
Baekje lacquered its armour; a black-lacquered lamellar piece inscribed with a Tang date of 645 was dug out of Gongsanseong, and Baekje sent the Tang emperor gold-lacquered armour that year. The common sword of all three kingdoms was the straight ring-pommel dao.
From museums and tombs 18 Photographs of real objects and murals.
Not pictured here Black-lacquered lamellar armour from Gongsanseong, dated 645Gongju National MuseumHorse armour from Malijeong, HamanHaman MuseumHorse armour from the Jjoksaem tombs, GyeongjuGyeongju National Research Institute of Cultural HeritageArmoured warriors of the Samsilchong muralGoguryeo tombs, Ji’an (UNESCO)
Painted for the story 10 Made for this book in its own style from the evidence above. An interpretation, not evidence.
Hair, skin and other customs머리, 몸, 그 밖의 풍속
Men tied their hair in a topknot. When the Chinese defector Wiman crossed into Gojoseon, the record says, he tied his hair in a topknot and put on local dress, and the southern Han peoples went bare-headed with the knot showing.
In the south, the Mahan (whose lands became Baekje’s) valued strung beads more than gold or silk, sewing them onto clothes and hanging them from the neck and ears. Among the Jinhan and Byeonhan, ancestors of Silla and Gaya, a stone was pressed against a newborn’s head to flatten it, and men and women near the Wa coast tattooed their bodies.
Gojoseon is known mostly through bronze: the lute-shaped Liaoning-type dagger, fine-lined mirrors with several knobs, and ornaments that were worn or carried for ritual. Buyeo, a visitor wrote, wore white at home.
- Baekje
Records of the Three Kingdoms (三國志), Wei 30, Eastern Barbarians: the Han peoples以瓔珠爲財寶，或以綴衣爲飾，或以縣頸垂耳，不以金銀錦繡爲珍。
The Mahan count strung beads as treasure, sewing them onto their clothes or hanging them from neck and ears, and do not prize gold, silver, brocade or embroidery.
- Gaya
Records of the Three Kingdoms (三國志), Wei 30, Eastern Barbarians: the Han peoples兒生，便以石厭其頭，欲其褊。今辰韓人皆褊頭。男女近倭，亦文身。
When a child is born they press its head with a stone to make it flat; the people of Jinhan all have flat heads today. Men and women near the Wa also tattoo themselves.
From museums and tombs 9 Photographs of real objects and murals.
Painted for the story 3 Made for this book in its own style from the evidence above. An interpretation, not evidence.
The neighbours: Tang and Asuka Yamato이웃 나라: 당과 아스카의 야마토
Tang Chang’an set the fashion for the whole of East Asia in the seventh century. Men at court wore round-collared robes belted with plaques and the soft black futou cap with its two stiff tails. Women piled their hair into tall looped chignons fixed with gold combs, and wore short jackets over long skirts tied high under the bust, with a translucent silk shawl over the shoulders.
Yamato, across the sea, learned much of its court dress through Baekje and Goguryeo. The women of the Takamatsuzuka mural wear long belted jackets over striped pleated skirts, close cousins of the Goguryeo murals. Men wore round-collared robes and black caps, and boys looped their hair beside the ears.
In 649 Silla took Tang robes for its men, and in 664 for its women. Yamato followed Tang more slowly, through its own court reforms.
From museums and tombs 5 Photographs of real objects and murals.
Painted for the story 5 Made for this book in its own style from the evidence above. An interpretation, not evidence.
Museums
- National Museum of Korea Seoul
The national collection; its e-museum catalogues every piece with photos, many free to reuse.
- Gyeongju National Museum Gyeongju
Silla gold crowns, belts and earrings from the great tombs.
- Gongju National Museum Gongju
The finds from King Muryeong’s tomb: cap ornaments, shoes, earrings.
- Buyeo National Museum Buyeo
Baekje of the Sabi era, including the gilt-bronze incense burner.
- Gimhae National Museum Gimhae
Gaya iron: plate armour, helmets, horse gear.
- Daegaya Museum Goryeong
Daegaya royal tombs at Jisan-dong, crowns and armour.
- Leeum Museum of Art Seoul
The gold crown attributed to Gaya, National Treasure 138.
- Hanseong Baekje Museum Seoul
Early Baekje, with reconstructions of dress and armour.
- Afrasiyab Museum Samarkand
The ambassadors’ mural with two feather-capped envoys from the east.
- Tokyo National Museum Tokyo
The Ogura collection of Korean goldwork and armour.
Further reading
- Encyclopedia of Korean Culture Academy of Korean Studies
Entries on jeolpung, jougwan, geumgwan, chalgap, each kingdom’s dress.
- Korean History Database: the Chinese histories on Korea National Institute of Korean History
The Eastern Barbarian chapters quoted on this page, in original and Korean translation.
- Samguk Sagi, Treatise on colours of dress Kim Busik (1145)
Silla, Goguryeo and Baekje rank dress in one chapter.
- National Museum of Korea e-museum Korean national and public museums
Searchable photographs of nearly every excavated object, many under the KOGL licence.
- Silla: Korea’s Golden Kingdom Metropolitan Museum of Art (2013)
Exhibition catalogue on Silla gold, with essays on the crowns and how they were worn.
- The Ambassadors’ Painting at Afrasiyab Matteo Compareti and others
On the two Korean envoys in the Samarkand mural and their feather caps.
Photographs are freely licensed files from Wikimedia Commons; each one carries its author and licence. The images under “Painted for the story” were made for this book.