Red and the Record: Archive Ecology and the Historiography of Color in Korea

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to examine ways in which Korean historiography has informed the meaning of the color red across material, political, and cultural registers. The paper traces the history of red from its regulated use in Joseon royal clothing to its mass adoption during the 2002 FIFA World Cup, and argues that scholarly claims about red's symbolic significance frequently relied on extrapolation and assumptions. This review draws on Korean institutional sources, secondary scholarship, and digitized primary archives to map two dominant interpretive lenses: red as a commodity structured by state control and scarcity, and red as a semantic signifier rooted in folk belief and shamanic tradition. By doing so, this paper finds that, while the material history of red is relatively well-documented, symbolic claims about red’s cultural meaning rely heavily on elite records, which leaves non-elite perspectives underrepresented. Further, the paper further considers how Korea's archive ecology, shaped by wartime destruction, Japanese colonial seizure, and selective digitization, has constrained what can be claimed and by whom. To draw a comparison between hemispheres, Spain and their historical ties to red appears as a historical counterpoint, revealing the absence of commodity-centered analysis in Korean scholarship. The review concludes by proposing three directions for future research: greater engagement with 
non-elite sources such as household compendia like Gyuhapchongseo, a more rigorous interrogation of the evidence standards underlying symbolic claims, and closer attention to how selective digitization has shaped which topics scholars are able to study at all. 

Introduction

The dominant narrative about color in Korean history has centered around the color white, Baeguiminjok (백의민족, 白衣民族). It is evident that other colors held equal significance in post-colonial Korean history. Notably indigo dyed overcoat durumagi and red robes of the king exist and ceremonial five colors. Current media and understanding of historical memory presents red as the color of the king. Analyzing the history of the color red is not merely an interpretation of aesthetics but rather a study of color as a proxy for power, hierarchy and cultural regulation.   This leads to an analytical framework of how color is used or interpreted as more than a daily object but as a symbol and apparatus of power structure. This review paper examines the narratives surrounding the color red in Korea through the lens of Korean and Western scholarship. The sources reviewed range from secondary publication about color and recordings about color to archival sources.   Korean research papers, publications from national institutes, online articles, and compendium of traditional dying techniques demonstrate throughlines in understanding and interpreting the color red. First, political historians and government writings tend to focus on the state level uses of red such as in royal clothing and political meanings. Simultaneously, folk historians and museums consider red based on folk traditions and systems such as Obangsaek (오방색, 五方色) and shamanistic practices. This tradition is often viewed in the lens of cultural and social history. Interpretations were highly based on the state level centered archives, such as silok or alternatively relied on the written records from the lower class that reflected people’s production and the use of the color red. These interpretations are constructed based on available archives, many of which are digitized.  Western sources reviewed color from economic, political, and semantic perspectives. They focus on the origin, production, monopoly and the cultural symbolism of the color.

They often posit the color red to inherently possess symbolic meanings. Despite the records of interpretations about red as desired and praised  color, what symbolic meaning they have and how the meaning is created is often assumed. However there were limitations in accessing Western and Spanish sources due to the barrier of language and limitations of folk knowledge as a foreign scholar. This review aims to bridge the gap between English and Korean scholarship by examining how each tradition constructs claims about red, what evidence the claims rests on, and what areas are unexamined.   The review led to the following research questions: how has Korean scholarship described red materially and symbolically using available sources?; how do Korea’s archive ecology (preservation, destruction, seizure, digitization) shape what can be claimed?; where do Western narratives and Spain as a comparator reveal blind spots in Korea-centered accounts? This is a Korea-centered narrative review; Spain appears only as a comparative case study on archives and on red-as-power and commodity. The aim of the paper is not to produce a parallel history between two nations but rather sharpen the understanding and direction of Korean scholarship through this contrast and comparison. 

Review Methodology

This paper is a Korea-centered narrative literature review with explicit organization rules. The goal is not to exhaust every publication on "red," but to map out the academic discourse surrounding red's material history and symbolic claims. In doing so, it also examines how archive ecology shapes what can be claimed.   The review followed a keyword driven relevance method. Searches were made in Google Scholar and JSTOR for peer-reviewed scholarship, and Google Search was to identify institutional or governmental publications online and archive portals. Since the review focuses on Korean history and general databases lack when providing enough relevant material, searches were made through the Korean scholarly database DBpia as well. Also National Institute of Korean History (NIKH) and Academy of Korean Studies (AKS) online databases were used to access digitized primary sources such as the veritable records of Joseon dynasty and topical history through keywords. For the purpose of allowing replication of the reviews, each database was used with a unique purpose and searches were conducted in Korean and English.  The review treats three classes of material as “literature,” but handled each differently: 
Secondary scholarship, peer-reviewed articles and academic books were used to identify the patterns of interpretation, dominant lenses such as state, power, economy, commodity, semantics, and the evidence for symbolic claims. Western sources were included as a comparator to examine what Korean scholarship leaves unanswered, foregrounds, and implicit.   Primary sources were utilised to establish the historic contexts and to explicate what evidence is available for claims about red. These are treated as evidence with positional bias, not as apparent truth. 
Digitized archives and portals are treated as objects of analysis. The review notes what these platforms make searchable and what they structurally obscure. 
Inclusion / exclusion criteria

Included sources met at least one of the following criteria :

●    peer-reviewed articles directly formulating a historical argument about the color red 

●    academic books 

●    institutional archive portals or national institutes’ publications that are relevant to red and archives

Excluded sources were removed for one or more reasons : 

●  popular articles used as evidence rather than discovery tools