Boys with long hair at a chicken Market 1900-1920



By Robert Neff



Despite the "common knowledge" warning that Korean women hid themselves from the eyes of strangers (especially foreigners), Western sailors visiting Korea for the first time were flattered to find themselves surrounded ― much to the amusement of their more experienced peers ― by young women with long braided hair. It was often the call of nature that later revealed the true nature of their admirers.



This embarrassing experience was frequently commented on in the writings of diplomats and visitors, including an English diplomat who, in 1883, warned that while Korean "married men wear their long hair gathered up in a top-knot; boys wear it plaited in a long queue, which gives them a very womanish appearance."



An English businessman who visited Seoul in 1883 wrote: "The unmarried men do not tie up the hair in a knot, but part it in the centre and plait the ends into a queue at the back. Many of them have a great deal of hair, and when a traveler first sees them (generally in a boat at some little distance) he almost invariably supposes them to be women."



Even up close and knowing what to expect was not a guarantee that you wouldn't make a mistake.





Taking care of siblings circa 1910-1930 Young nurse maid 1920-1940



"The court pages and pretty boys who attend the magnates, usually rosy-cheeked, well fed, and effeminate looking youths, do not give any certain indication of their sex, and foreigners are often puzzled to know whether they are male or female. Their beardless faces and long hair are set down as belonging to women. Most navigators have made this mistake in gender, and when the first embassy from Seoul landed in Yokohama, the controversy, and perhaps the betting, as to the sex of these nondescripts was very lively."



Not all Westerners were masculine. In 1901, there was a French naval officer, known as Pierre Loti, who caused quite a stir in the foreign community. He was "a short little man, with high heels to give him stature, corseted tightly as a belle of former days, cheeks and lips rouged like a modern flapper."



An American adviser to the Korea government wrote: "It was incredible that any man could live under such studied rudeness and contempt as that of the sturdy Breton officers of the flagship. They disliked his effeminacy as only a blue-water sailor can detest such things; they studied the insults in which they expressed their feelings as only a French courtier could ― to remain well within bounds of civilized intercourse while making life unbearable for one whom they quite plainly believed to be unfit for the company of men."





Boys with long hair studying circa 1890s