If you have watched Netflix's Kingdom, you have already seen a gat. Rows of them, actually, bobbing through candlelit palace halls while zombies close in.
What the show does not tell you is that a single one of those hats could take five months and three separate master craftsmen to make.
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| A heukrip, the black lacquered gat worn by Joseon's noble class, woven from horsehair and bamboo. |
What a Gat Actually Is
A gat is a traditional Korean hat worn by men alongside hanbok during the Joseon period. It has a distinctive shape, a tall cylindrical crown sitting on top of a wide, flat brim, and it is woven finely enough to be genuinely translucent.
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| Hold it up to the light and you can see straight through the weave. |
The frame is built from bamboo. The surface is woven from horsehair, stretched so thin you can often see light pass straight through it. Underneath, the hat served a practical purpose too, protecting the sangtu, the topknot hairstyle worn by married men in Joseon Korea.
Where It Came From
The heukrip, the black lacquered style most people picture when they hear the word gat, has roots stretching back even further than Joseon itself. Records mention the term as early as 1367, during the reign of King Gongmin in the late Goryeo dynasty.
Its final, recognizable shape came together during the Joseon era, and from there it settled firmly into place as the signature headwear of the upper class.
Three Master Craftsmen, 51 Steps
Making a gat by hand is not a quick process, and it was never meant to be.
The full process, called gannil, traditionally involves three separate specialists, one shaping the crown, one weaving the brim, and one assembling the finished pieces together with any additional trim. Altogether, the craft breaks down into roughly 51 individual steps.
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| Fifty-one steps. Three craftsmen. Five months. All for one hat. |
Even today, certified gat masters follow this same demanding process. A single high-quality hat can take close to five months to finish, and the craft survives almost exclusively in Tongyeong, on Korea's southern coast, kept alive by government-certified artisans known as Ganniljang.
Not Just Black
Color was never decorative alone. It carried meaning.
- Heukrip, the black lacquered gat, was the standard everyday and formal choice for the yangban class
- Baekrip, a plain white gat, was worn specifically during periods of national mourning
- Jurip, a deep red gat, marked senior military officials
- Paeraengi, a simpler hat woven from bamboo or reed, was worn by commoners rather than the nobility
Glance at a man's hat from across a Joseon street, and you would already know roughly who you were looking at.
More Than a Hat, a Status Symbol
Confucian values shaped nearly every part of Joseon dress, and the gat carried more weight than almost any other single item.
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| Putting it on meant something. It meant you were no longer a boy. |
Before the late 19th century, wearing a gat was largely restricted to noble class men. It was also closely tied to a specific life milestone. Young men typically began wearing one after completing gwanrye, a formal coming-of-age ceremony, marking their transition into adulthood in the eyes of society.
Putting one on was never just about staying dressed. It was a quiet public statement about who you had become.
The Show That Made the World Notice
Kingdom is set in the late 1500s, deep in the Joseon period, and its costume design leaned hard into historical detail, gat included. For a lot of international viewers, that zombie thriller was the first time they had ever really looked closely at one of these hats.
The hat itself is centuries older than the show, and considerably more labor-intensive than any prop department shortcut could ever fake.
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