“SELL your hair,” clamoured sweet-sellers in Seoul in the 1950s. The capital of South Korea had been pulverised by a three-year war with North Korea. Southern women were cutting off and selling their tresses, typically worn in a long plait or a low bun, for dollars, rice and rubber shoes.
The hawkers sold the jet-black locks to wigmakers in Guro, a district of south-western Seoul that was home to the first industrial complex built in South Korea after the war for the export market. (A year into the fighting, half of the country’s factories were in ruins.) In the 1960s thousands of female labourers soaked, stitched and styled the hair of their destitute countrywomen in Guro’s factories.
The wig industry in South Korea has proved remarkably resilient. Today it is South Korean women who are its fastest-growing source of demand. They snap them up for $1,000 apiece from Hi-Mo, a maker of custom wigs that began business in 1987 as an exporter and now dominates the domestic...Continue reading
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