The Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism and the Korea Crafts & Design Foundation announced Friday that two local middle schools -- Jakcheon Middle School and Daechang Middle School -- had adopted hanbok-inspired school uniforms on Nov. 16.

This is the first uptake of hanbok-inspired school uniforms, which were created as part of a project, led jointly by the Culture Ministry and the Ministry of Education, which began in February last year.
 

“Along with 53 uniform designs that we provided for selection last year, we added 50 more to broaden students’ options,” the Culture Ministry official said in a statement.

A total of 50 schools around the country applied for the project. Initially, the ministry announced that it had selected 22 schools, but as of Friday 16 schools, with a total of 2,308 students, are still participating in the project.

The project organizer added that three more schools will adopt uniforms in December and students from eight additional schools will be wearing hanbok-inspired uniforms starting next March.

For the seven schools that were selected to receive local Office of Education funding for the new school uniforms, the ministry has assigned a hanbok designer and funds to make prototypes. For the nine schools that are not receiving any funding, the ministry is providing an additional 300,000 won ($251) per student for three years.

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