Recently, young people wearing hanbok are highly visible in the palace and in Hanok Village. However, there is much controversy regarding whether the hanbok the young people are wearing is traditional. Young people in Korea are exposed to hanbok through a variety of ways such as school education, games, webtoons, television shows, and movies. In this study, we presented teenagers with illustrations of hanbok to see which they preferred and which if any they recognized as traditional. The study respondents most preferred the hanbok from the 18th century, but they considered the hanbok from the 20th century to be the traditional style. We next used text mining to analyze the students’ freely written, open-ended responses regarding the hanbok they preferred and the one they considered traditional. The hanbok from the 18th century, the one the teenagers preferred, was a sexy, cool style related to gisaeng that emphasized the waist, whereas the hanbok they believed was traditional, the 20th-century hanbok, was simple, neat, comfortable, and plain. Among the young people’s responses regarding which hanbok was traditional, the text mining extracted the following repeated words related to both the 18th- and 20th-century hanbok: “dramas,” “mass media,” “historical dramas,” and “movies.” For the 18th-century hanbok only, we extracted “webtoons” and “Hanok Village,” and for only the 20th-century hanbok, we extracted “textbooks.”

The purpose of this study is to investigate changes in the rental Hanbok market and consumer during the past 10 years. This study was done by analyzing internet news about rental Hanbok and in-depth interview. The results provide basic data that can be used to understand the rental Hanbok market. Results showed the followings: First, the rental Hanbok market has expanded and consists of two types of rental Hanbok; ceremonial and experiential. The experiential Hanbok is new but a big part in rental Hanbok market. It is not existed until 2007 but it accounted for more than 60% of internet news about rental Hanbok in 2016. Second, there is a significant difference in consumer behavior between the two types of rental Hanbok. Ceremonial Hanbok showed consistent consumer behavior between 2006 and 2016. Consumer want to get benefits such as TPO(occasion suitability), economy, exhibition, trendy and exceptionality through renting Hanbok. On the other hand, experiential Hanbok, consumers are motivated by having unique, conformity and sharing memories. Based on these results, different sets of information reveal the unique features of the two types of rental Hanbok. And also needed to develop new designs and marketing strategies for them.