Annyeonghaseyo, Patna

Bihar's capital city's heart beats for all things Korean

BOWING her head in greeting, she says, “Annyeonghaseyo.” Perhaps the first word anyone who enters the world of Korean gets to hear. It could mean hello or hi, good morning or afternoon or evening, but it literally means “to be at peace” or, said with a question mark, “Are you at peace?” (from ‘annyeong’—peace in Korean—and ‘haseyo’, a standard ending for words that means ‘to do’ or ‘to be’). The 17-year-old wishing you peace is dressed in a ‘chima jeogori’, a skirt-top ensemble, and a ‘po’ jacket, patterned on the attire Koreans have worn since antiquity with the earliest visual depictions traced back to the period from 57 BCE to 668 CE. The men wear loose-fitting ‘baji trousers instead of the ‘chima’.

Ihina, who is not only adept in the language but has also imbibed other aspects of Korean culture such as K-pop, K-drama or K-beauty, says the style is called Hanbok, after the ‘Han’—the term Koreans started using to refer to themselves during the period of the Empire of Korea, beginning 1897—to distinguish Korean fashion from Japanese and Western clothing. In 1996 the South Korean government declared a Hanbok Day to popularise it, although people in North Korea—the country was divided in 1945, two years before the Indian Partition—have preferred to use the term ‘choson-ot’ for what essentially remains the same style.“Korean is not only pleasing to the ear but the Hangul script is also easy to learn,” says Ihina bang in the middle of Patna, Bihar’s capital city, where the K-wave or Hallyu (literally, wave or flow) has taken the locals, especially Gen Z, by storm. Chains like Tao Bao that sell Korean food and Mumuso, a Korean lifestyle brand, have opened their outlets in the city and ‘tteokbokki’, long, white, cylindrical rice cakes used to make a popular Korean dish, can be found in any decent grocery store.