Play Costume from the Mural Paintings of Goguryeo

고구려 고분벽화에 나타난 놀이복식

The culture of the play of Korean ancient times is well described in the mural painting of Goguryeo. The example is people appearing in the play painting of performance, dance, hunting, and acrobatics out of 20 mural painting of genre. Their costume is broadly classified into performance, dance, hunting, and acrobatic costume and can be subdivided according to the types of costume. First, the head gear of play costume reflected the formality and social conditions of play. In the performance and hunting costume, all performers wore gwanmo(official hats), which seemed to make it a rule to wear gwanmo. Gwanmo was borrowed intactly from Goguryeo without any changes or decorations, which showed that the status symbolism of head gear was applied intactly to play costume. Second, the play costume of Goguryeo enhanced efficiency by blending daily costume with elements and decorations needed for play performance. Specifically the change of length was prominent: the short sleeves of jeogori(traditional blouse), the long sleeves of dance costume, and fastening below the knee or putting into the long shoes to shorten the length of baji(traditional pants). Finally, as it is well known that there was some differences in the expression modes of daily clothes in Goguryeo between Tonggu and Pyeongyang. Similarly, play costume tried to change costume according to the subject of play but maintained the locality and peculiarity of Goguryeo costume. Although performance costume showed many local differences, it also had similarity and peculiarity. In dance costume, long sleeves and patterns which frequently appeared in the Tonggu area reappeared in the Pyeongyang.