The Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism on Tuesday announced that it will select 20 middle and high schools that will adopt hanbok-inspired school uniforms in conjunction with the Ministry of Education.

“We hope that a new value of hanbok can be discovered through hanbok-inspired uniforms that look good and feel comfortable,” a Culture Ministry official said in a statement.

This project began in February last year when the Culture Ministry and the Ministry of Education signed a memorandum on the school uniform project. The two ministries also held a contest and selected 53 different uniform designs based on Korea’s traditional costume in April last year.

The ministries will separately pick 10 schools that currently receive funds for students’ uniforms and 10 schools that do not. For selected schools without uniform assistance, the government will provide up to 300,000 won per student for three years.

Applications from schools will be taken from May 18-29.

The final decision is expected in June to make the uniforms available in the second semester of the current academic year or the beginning of next year at the latest.

Hanbok-inspired school uniform samples are on view at the KCDF Gallery in Insa-dong, Seoul from May 6 to 29. Schools can also meet with consultants from the Hanbok Advancement Center of Culture Ministry at the gallery regarding the project..

More details can also be found on the Hanbok Advancement Center’s website at www.hanbokcenter.kr.

The government also added that it will come up with measures, in the second half of the year, such as adopting hanbok-inspired uniforms for people working in cultural and art institutions, to make hanbok part of people’s everyday life.

By Song Seung-hyun (ssh@heraldcorp.com)