C J627 :
There are no characters "韓服 (hanbok)" in South Korea's ancient books, only "漢服 (hanfu)". Since the Korean writing system is phonetic and has no tones, the two Chinese characters "漢 (han)" and "韓 (han)" are both pronounced "한 (han)" in Korean. The Chinese character "服 (fu, meaning clothing)" is pronounced "fu" in Chinese and "bok (복)" in Korean.
(As a side note, the Han people of China call themselves "漢 (han)", people of South Korea call their country "韓 (han)", and people of North Korea call their country "조선 (Joseon, meaning 朝鮮)".)
Therefore, the obvious truth is: when South Koreans translated their ancestors' ancient books and encountered the characters "漢服 (hanfu)", they translated them into "한복 (hanbok)". Technically, this is not wrong according to their pronunciation rules. The problem arises because South Korea has adopted "hanbok" as the name for its own national costume. When Chinese people introduced "hanfu" to the international community, an awkward situation emerged—when written in Korean, the two names overlap, resulting in "한복" which corresponds to both "漢服 (hanfu)" and "韓服 (hanbok)".
This is also why Google Translate sometimes incorrectly translates "hanfu" as "hanbok". Ultimately, it is due to the flaw of the Korean writing system being purely phonetic, with an excessive number of homophones—a consequence of abandoning the use of Chinese characters.
It is clear that "한복 (hanbok)" originally referred to "漢服 (hanfu)", as evidenced by the original text in South Korea's ancient books. Moreover, the nobles of China and South Korea wore identical clothing during the Ming Dynasty, which further confirms this point.
To avoid confusion, in the past two years, South Korea has coined a new term for "hanfu"—"한푸 (hanpu)", a pure transliteration. Since South Koreans cannot accurately pronounce the sound "fu", they use "pu" instead. In fact, "푸" has no meaning related to clothing; it is purely a transliteration character.
2025-09-30 09:15:36