The short answer
- Over 140 years, the Korean school uniform has moved from the chima jeogori → the black student uniform → a three-year ban → branded suits → today's everyday wear.
- What students actually wear to school now is a hoodie-and-sweatpants-style everyday uniform. The blazer-and-tie look you rent has already retired from the classroom.
- That retired outfit survived as a photo prop and built the uniform-rental district outside Lotte World — where Ehwa Uniform has been a fixture since 2018.
Watch people renting school uniforms and walking into Lotte World, and it’s easy to assume the outfit is what Korean students wear today. That’s about half wrong. The blazer and tie on the rental rack were the classroom standard of the 2000s; today’s classroom standard is closer to a hoodie. The uniform tourists wear belongs not to present-day Korea but to the Korea Korean dramas remember.
This piece traces, in order, how that gap opened up — then introduces the rental district that grew up around Jamsil Station as a result, and one shop that has lasted there longer than most.
When did the Korean school uniform begin?
In 1886, Ewha Hakdang dressed its female students in a dark-red cotton chima jeogori — the first school uniform on record. The detail worth noting: it wasn’t a Western jacket but a hanbok. From the very start, a school uniform wasn’t “Western clothing” — it was a mark of belonging to a school.
After that, things moved fast.
📜 The first uniforms — from the Enlightenment period through Japanese rule
| Year | School / body | What happened |
|---|---|---|
| 1886 | Ewha Hakdang | Dark-red cotton chima jeogori — the first recorded girls’ uniform |
| 1898 | Baejae Hakdang | Boys’ dangbok (school robe) introduced |
| 1904 | Hanseong Middle School | A black durumagi overcoat stamped with the school emblem |
| 1907 | Sookmyung Girls’ School | A one-piece dress uniform |
| c. 1920 | — | Skirt-type girls’ uniforms and suit-type boys’ uniforms settle in |
Why these particular schools
All of them were modern schools founded by missionaries or pro-Western reformers. At the time, simply going to school was rare, and the uniform was the mark that let people spot that minority on the street. Where today's uniform reads as a symbol of control, at its starting point it was closer to a mark of privilege.
Why did the "black uniform" become the image of the Korean school uniform?
Because the stand-collar boys’ student uniform (gakuran) and the girls’ sailor uniform arrived under Japanese rule — and simply stayed after liberation.
- 1939 — Japan forces the national-defense-colored uniform. Into the 1940s, girls were put in monpe work trousers and boys in olive-drab uniforms. This was the era when the uniform became a tool of wartime mobilization.
- 1950s–60s — Even after liberation, black and navy uniforms carried on. There was no room to invent a new look.
- 1969 — The middle-school no-exam entry policy (leveling) standardized the black uniform nationwide. 1974 brought high-school leveling as well.
In this period, the uniform wasn’t one piece of clothing — it was closer to a rulebook in fabric. The school emblem, the name tag, the grade badge, the student cap, even the hair-length regulations, all came as a bundle. It’s where most Koreans in their 40s and 50s get their mental image of a “school uniform.”
Korea once had a stretch of time with no school uniforms
The strangest stretch in the whole history of the Korean school uniform. In 1983, the uniform was legally abolished.
The sequence went like this. In 1982, wearing your own clothes once a week (usually Saturday) was allowed first, and in March 1983 full autonomy took effect. There were two stated reasons — that uniforms ignored students’ individuality and autonomy, and that the gakuran and sailor suit were leftovers from Japanese rule that needed clearing away.
Then, within three years, it flipped.
The return was slow, because it wasn’t mandatory — it was up to each principal. 13% in 1989, about half in 1991, 83% by 1993. Over a decade, the uniform essentially walked itself back in.
And that return is the origin of the clothes hanging in today’s rental shops. From the late 1990s, uniforms became a brand business. Ivy Club, Smart, Elite, and Skoolooks hired idols as ad models, and students slimmed their waists and legs. The slim, suit-like silhouette we call “the Korean school uniform” wasn’t decided by the state — it was a shape invented by that era’s marketing and trends.
What's the difference between a "retro uniform" and today's uniform?
Once you know why the rental shops name their product retro uniforms, the present of the Korean school uniform comes into focus. They’re “retro” precisely because they’ve already retired from school.
👕 Retro uniform vs. today's uniform — what changed
| — | Retro uniform (1990s–2000s) | Today’s uniform (late 2010s–) |
|---|---|---|
| Basic set | Blazer (mai) · vest · shirt · tie/bow · plaid skirt or slacks | Short- and long-sleeve tees, hoodies and zip-ups, sweatpants — the everyday uniform |
| Fabric | Suiting fabric, prioritizing shape | Stretch and quick-dry, prioritizing wash convenience |
| Girls’ bottoms | A skirt as the de facto default | Pants option expanding |
| Where the formal uniform sits | Worn every day | Shrunk to ceremonies — entrance, graduation |
| How it’s bought | Parents buy individually at brand stores | School-organized purchase · growing free-uniform support from local governments |
| Where you see it now | Dramas, idol stage outfits, uniform rental shops | The actual school commute |
Why do students wear uniforms to the amusement park?
Going to an amusement park in uniform is a fairly old ritual in Korea. The reasons pile up.
Three reasons for the uniform amusement-park trip
- Record — the day exams end, the days just before graduation, school trips. These are photos taken before the uniformed years run out.
- Belonging — a group in identical clothes makes a much stronger picture. Casual clothes scatter; uniforms pull together.
- Backdrop — amusement parks are loud with color and light. Against neat clothes the contrast is big, and the photos come out well.
On top of that came K-dramas and idols. A large share of the decisive scenes in school dramas are shot in uniform, and uniform concepts keep recurring as idol stage outfits. The result: for overseas viewers, the uniform stopped being “a student’s clothes” and became a costume for recreating a scene. It’s the same structure as wearing a hanbok to Gyeongbokgung. The difference is that a hanbok wears the past, while the uniform wears the youth of a drama.
So the uniform-rental shops grew outside Lotte World
The reason demand gathered in Jamsil is plainly geographic.
To put it simply, a uniform-rental shop isn’t a clothes business — it’s a service bundling a changing room, storage, and a photo set. That’s why being within a 5–10-minute walk of Lotte World’s main gate is decisive, and why the shops crowd that radius and compete.
Ehwa Uniform — a fixture since 2018
One of the longest-surviving shops in the Jamsil uniform-rental district is Ehwa Uniform. It opened in 2018 and has served the Lotte World crowd from the basement of Galleria Palace.
🏫 Ehwa Uniform at a glance
| Item | Details |
|---|---|
| Location | Galleria Palace B1, Jamsil (5–10 min walk from Lotte World) |
| How to get there | Search “Galleria Palace” on Naver Map → the door left of Starbucks → elevator down to B1 → follow the signs for “36 Mall” |
| Hours | 09:00 – 22:30 |
| Basic set | Shirt (long-sleeve) · pants/skirt · vest · tie |
| Add-ons | Jacket ₩5,000 · bag ₩5,000 |
| Deposit & locker | ₩5,000 deposit per uniform · ₩1,000 locker |
| Sizes | XS – XXL |
| Facilities | Classroom-concept photo set, powder room with straighteners and hair ties |
| Service | English available |
What to know before you rent
- There's no photography service. You use the classroom set and powder room, but no photographer shoots for you. If you want retouched photos, book a self studio separately.
- A jacket isn't really optional. The silhouette you saw in dramas only works with the jacket on. Budgeting on the base fee alone will throw your math off.
- Renting in the morning pays off. The fee is per day, so 9 a.m. or 3 p.m. costs about the same. They stay open until 10:30 p.m., so you can use the night lighting too.
- The deposit comes back. It's refunded on return, so you can leave it out of your total.
So, is it worth wearing one?
As an experience, the value is clear. Just know what you’re actually buying.
- If you want to recreate a drama scene — this is it. Rental-shop uniforms are optimized for exactly that.
- If you want to see how Korean students actually live — take the subway on a weekday between 3 and 5 p.m. You’ll see far more hoodies and sweatpants.
- If you’re weighing it against a hanbok — they’re different in kind. A hanbok comes with the practical perk of free palace entry, while a uniform pairs with modern backdrops like amusement parks and lakes. I’ve compared the price structures in a table in Jamsil uniform rental: per-hour rates vs. hanbok.
One uniform carries 140 years on its shoulders. The missionary school’s red chima jeogori, the Japanese black student uniform, the three-year autonomy experiment, the brand wars, and finally the retreat into hoodies. Renting that outfit in Jamsil is close to borrowing, for a day, an era Korea once wore and has since left only to its dramas.
Sources
- National Archives of Korea — Korea in Records: School Uniform (timeline from the Enlightenment period through leveling)
- Wikipedia — School uniform autonomy (the 1982–1993 autonomy and return)
- Klook — Ehwa Uniform Rental (Lotte World) (location, hours, set, pricing)
- Store visit still needed for: opening year, actual 2026 pricing — marked
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