When we prepared to travel to bring home our son, many people asked me if I was going to have a hanbok made for myself. I had never thought about it, and like you said, Korea is not my culture and there are so many traditions that go along with it. Playing dress-up or to get your child to wear the garment of their birthland is definately not a reason to wear a hanbok, or any other traditional clothing.

Great post.

As a Korean American, I have mixed feelings on this. I think it’s a complicated issue. Sometimes I think (this is purely speaking from the gut) that white adoptive parents look “weird” in han-bok; there’s something off about it. Koreans are literally the “people of the Han” and “bok” means clothes (i.e, for you tae kwon do fans out there, do-bok is tkd uniform).

I think it has to do whether people are playing dress-up either with themselves or their kids. You’re not respecting Korean culture if you treat your child as a doll, or if you treat Korea as a halloween costume. However, I have seen non-Korean adoptive parents wear han-bok in a graceful and entirely respectful way as well.

Hm…maybe this is worth a blog from the fertility lady. Thanks for bringing the topic up to this board.

ml