Netflix's Scandal Hanbok Designer on Color, Craft, and Zero Shortcuts

The Netflix series Scandal — a Joseon-era reimagining of Les Liaisons Dangereuses set in 18th-century Korea — launched with one of the most obsessively researched costume wardrobes in recent Korean drama history. The designer behind every layer of it is Kim Young-jin, the founder of bespoke hanbok label Chai Kim Young-jin and its ready-to-wear line Chaikim, sometimes called "the Chanel of hanbok."

Kim's previous drama credits include Mr. Sunshine and the film Haeuihwa, but Scandal is a different scale entirely. She built color identities for all seven principal characters before a single garment was cut — each character's arc is literally color-coded across the run of the series.

The color logic is the most interesting thing about this project. Jo-ssi Buin, played by Son Ye-jin, wears green — not the obvious red or wine you'd expect for a seductive, powerful woman. Kim's reasoning: Jo-ssi Buin is someone of extraordinary talent and artistic intelligence who is completely blocked by the realities of what a woman could do in that era. Green reads as neutral, open, unresolved. As her emotional state intensifies across the story, the green darkens toward black. It's a character arc you can track through fabric.

Heui-yeon, played by Nana, wears so-saek — the undyed, natural color of raw cotton or hemp before any bleaching process. It reads warmer than white, closer to raw linen. The character is a young widow bound by strict codes of chastity; the color does the storytelling before she speaks a word.

Jo-won, played by Ji Chang-wook, is anchored in deep indigo blue.

The historical research went deep. Kim referenced 18th-century Korean paintings — specifically the Hyewon sketchbooks — and excavated burial textiles to verify silhouettes, proportions, and color combinations. But she's clear that pure historical accuracy alone makes for dull television. Her own interpretation sits on top of the research: 18th-century women's jeogori (the short jacket) was cut short enough that the skirt waistband showed prominently — that detail is period-correct and visually striking on screen.

The series has several intimate scenes, which meant the underwear layers had to be fully realized too. Women's undergarments in the period involved multiple stacked layers — sokjeoksam, sokjeogori, darisokgot, soksokgot, baji, and dansokgot — all designed to give the skirt its characteristic bell shape. Men wore their own layered undergarments beneath the outer jeogori. Kim made all of it, and she made it specific: some characters' innermost layers are pink, a detail she grounds in excavated textiles that show Joseon-era Koreans did dye personal garments in unexpected colors.

The accessories — dwikkoji (ornamental hairpins worn at the back of the head), binyeo (long hairpins), and gat (men's horsehair hats) — got the same treatment. Kim pulled from her own 20-year personal collection of pieces, including works by holders of intangible cultural heritage designations, because the production budget didn't stretch to commissioning everything at the quality she needed. She built individual accessory guides for each costume — specifying angle, placement, and combination — so on-set staff wouldn't make substitutions. Her quote on this: "Get one color wrong and the temperature of the whole room changes."

Kim's client list at Chai Kim Young-jin includes BTS and Tilda Swinton, and she's explicit that no one gets sponsored pieces — every client on that list paid. The label also designed stage costumes for productions at the National Opera Company, National Changgeuk Company, and National Dance Company of Korea, among others.

Kim's term for where she wants hanbok to land culturally is "fashion hanbok" — not everyday wear, which she considers unrealistic, but the equivalent of pulling out a great piece for a significant occasion. Scandal is the clearest argument she's made yet for what that looks like at full ambition.