The idea of han, fashion and nationalism

“We – the Koreans – were born from the womb of han and brought up in the womb of han.”
 Ko Eun

A Korean friend has given me her doctoral dissertation to read. It's always helpful to have someone to read through your work and give you an opinion, prior to submission. In the  days of my own submission I pestered everyone I knew to read at least a chapter. As you will guess, I ended up having very, very  few friends at that point in time ...
I have no expertise in her subject, I am simply reading her thesis  as a lay person. It's really fascinating.  She writes about Korean traditional theatre from a feminist perspective and of course she discusses han at length. Han is a concept many writers have defined as a peculiarly Korean emotion, a mix of bitterness, resentment, realisation of one's own inability to change circumstances and attendant sorrow and despondency. There is also a sense of pleasure in wallowing in han,  indeed han is pleasurable. Moreover, han is linked with women, through Confucian patriarchal rules, and is, many would argue, embodied by them. However, and most importantly, han also encompasses a sense of hope, as writer Kyong -Ni Park has argued. This is  a rather seductive idea, despondency and hope rolled into one.
The word han is very difficult to translate, though I would not go as far as saying that the emotions conveyed by han are totally alien to non-Koreans. Au contraire. A comparison could be drawn with the sense of 'spleen' or la mélancolie of Baudelaire.
Outside Korea people may have encountered han through the hallyu (K-wave) of Korean films, which are fast becoming popular and seem to be imbued with a sense of han down to the music composed for them.
Generally, I am very weary of definitions such as 'quintessentially Korean', I do not believe in national  characteristics, these are constructs, and they are usually stereotypes that completely disregard diversity, in fact they are aimed at flattening everyone out in order to conform to an ideal, positive (or negative) that may be.
In relation to han, I find my instinctive objections to its specific Korean-ness are supported by the views of a certain Korean writer (identity unknown) who, as reported by artist Alida Sayer in her blog documenting her residency in Seoul, claims that 'Korean han is a (Japanese) colonialist invention'. It sounds right to me. Anyone who has read Frantz Fanon's masterly essay The Wretched of the Earth  (1963) on the devastating emotional power of the internalised sense of inferiority of the colonised will nod in agreement.

But the appeal to the Korean-ness of han dominates contemporary Korean culture in all its manifestations, including fashion design and its very sophisticated use of subdued colours and 'naturalness', aimed at  generating a specific visual aesthetics - people do, after all, talk of Han design with reference to Korean emerging practices, using the term han as synonymous with Korean-ness.
Which brings me to the next point: what is the link between design culture and national identity? As we are discussing South Korea, I will quote Yoong Kyung Lee, an emerging Korean designer, who says the following:

"Oversensitivity about identity can be problematic in South Korea and a solution cannot be found by pretending that national identity does not matter; a solution must highlight elements of identity that serve necessary goals. I view this as one of the most challenging aspects of national branding: distilling the vastness of national identity into something that is relevant and communicable to specific audiences". The audiences here clearly encompass non-Korean ones.

I do not think this is applicable only to South Korea. Compare what Yoong says with what  Jess Cartner-Morley writes, in The Guardian, about London Fashion Week  2017 

"The message from this week’s shows was that with Brexit an impending reality, the British fashion industry intends to do as our prime minister instructed, and make the best of it. There is no union jack flag waving in fashion, an international industry philosophically and structurally at odds with isolationism, but this week’s shows crystallised a new sharp focus on British identity. The look for next autumn is arthouse patriotism".

We live at a time when there is indeed a revival of national narratives and of nationalism, sweeping across the globe. Mrs May's rejection of the idea of a 'citizen of the world' in her view equating to being  a 'citizen of nowhere' is symptomatic of a way of thinking that will soon be replete with stereotypes about national characteristics and will require some careful negotiation. 

Enough to make me feel overcome by han (with its incumbent sense of hope).

*** The Conversation which I talked about in an earlier post will now be broadcast on 20th March and will then be available on podcast ***