Topknots and Crockery Hats

Long ago, a wise and honored man named Kija served as a top advisor in an ancient Chinese court.When a new king rose to power, Kija chose not to serve him and decided to lead his people to a new land in the east instead.Five thousand people followed him, and together they crossed rivers and mountains toward the rising sun.

At last they reached a beautiful river valley, and Kija named the new land “Cho-sen,” the Land of Morning Radiance.He built a city there and taught the people how to farm, weave, and build warm, comfortable houses.But the local people were still rough and quick-tempered, and street fights often ended in broken skulls.

Wanting to calm his new kingdom, Kija made a law: every married man must tie his hair into a neat topknot.He hoped the topknot would make men look dignified and behave more gently.Instead, angry men grabbed each other’s topknots and pulled even harder in their fights.

So Kija tried something stranger: he ordered huge, heavy hats made of baked clay for every quarrelsome man.Each hat was wide as a table and had to be worn every single day, rain or shine.Now, when two men fought and knocked heads, it was their crockery hats that cracked — not their skulls.

A broken hat was expensive to replace, costing a good half year’s wages from the potter.Little by little, men stopped throwing punches and instead only shouted, glared, and pulled the fiercest faces they could.A street fight became a strange, silent contest of ugly expressions, with no blood spilled at all.

The heavy hats grew so popular that women borrowed them as washbowls, and farmers used them as feeding troughs for their animals.Over years, the whole land grew calmer, and Koreans became known far and wide for their politeness.Eventually men traded the heavy crockery hats for light ones of horsehair and straw — and that is why, to this day, Korea is remembered as the land of hats.