Abstract
The purpose of this research was to investigate the influential factors to wear or not to wear \"Hanbok\" in Korean society. Twenty six individuals who wear Hanbok relatively often, and twenty seven individuals who dont were purposively sampled and interviewed for the study by structured depth-interview method. A domain analysis, a method of qualitative study, was employed to find out the influential factors from the results of the depth-intervews. From the analysis, fifteen encouraging or discouraging factors to wear Hanbok emerged and were categorized into five domains, which included \"interpersonal relationship\", \"life-style\", \"image\", \"practicality\" and \"decorative function\". The personal involvement in traditional culture, tradition-oriented family background, good images related to Hanbok, and affordable life-style appeared to be encouraging factors to wear Hanbok. Meanwhile, social norm and role-expectation adjusted to westernized criteria, unaffordable life-style, ill practicality of Hanbok and negative cues associated with Hanbok were the factors influencing people to turn away from Hanbok. The study also revealed complex interactions between these factors explaining individuals choice of wearing or not wearing Hanbok in industrialized modern society of Korea. Some suggestions to promote wearing Hanbok were made based oh the results of this study.wearing Hanbok were made based oh the results of this study.
