Why I Chose a Hanbok Doll and a Hahoetal Frame as Gifts for My Professors in the U.S.

As the end of the year approaches, there are always people who weigh on my mind. For me, it was the professors I had in the United States. I owed them so much during my studies, yet after coming back all I had managed was a handful of emails. This year I decided not to let it pass again, so I sat down at my laptop every evening.

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The first thing I typed into the search bar was "gift for professor in the U.S." Then "Korean gift for foreign professor," then "traditional Korean gift to send to the U.S." There were plenty of results, but that only made choosing harder. I had 2 worries. One was whether something might look cheap. These were items that would sit in a professor's office, and I didn't want them to look like something grabbed randomly at the airport. The other worry was the journey across the ocean. Anything fragile or containing liquid would be a problem for the recipient as well.

At one point I looked into calendars. A calendar with Korean artwork could hang on the wall all year long. But then I thought that if the dates and days of the week followed the Korean standard, they wouldn't line up with American public holidays, so I left an inquiry and moved on. Ceramic mugs also caught my eye, but when I imagined them rolling around inside a box, I couldn't bring myself to choose one.

Something That Could Sit on an Office Bookshelf

In the end, 2 options remained. For one professor, a doll; for the other, a framed piece.

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For the doll, I decided on the 한복인형-황후 (Hanbok Doll – Empress). It is made with silk and brocade-type hanbok fabric, gold-thread embroidery, and norigae (traditional ornamental pendants). At 34 cm tall and 18 cm wide, it is a size that stands out immediately when placed on a shelf. What appealed to me was the description that each one is made individually from leftover hanbok fabric, so the expression differs slightly from piece to piece. Saying that no two are exactly alike is no exaggeration.

Before placing the order I posted a question on the inquiry board: "I'd like to give this to a professor in the U.S. — does it look premium enough as a gift?" A short reply came back saying it was a good product for the price, and oddly enough that made me trust it more. I appreciated that the answer wasn't inflated.

For the other professor, I chose the 작은 2형 액자-하회탈(가로) (Small Type 2 Frame – Hahoetal, Horizontal). Inside a wooden frame, the yangban-tal (nobleman mask) and bune-tal (young woman mask) from National Treasure No. 121, the Hahoe masks, are rendered in three dimensions. At 13 cm wide and 9 cm tall, it is not a large frame — it is the kind of size you lean against the front of a bookshelf or set beside a desk monitor. That professor has always had a warm sense of humor, so I felt the playful expressions of the hahoetal would suit them perfectly.

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Why I Added a Line with a Name

Sending just the gifts on their own felt incomplete. So I asked for a small nameplate to be attached to the lower front of each item — the doll and the frame. I requested the recipient's name, my name, and the month and year written in English. I also asked for the recipient's name to be set slightly larger than the other text. I revised the wording a few times and sent the final version back, and it took longer than I expected to get the date format looking clean. Whether this kind of additional work is possible varies by product, so it is easier on the mind to confirm before ordering.

Once the names were added, the nature of the objects changed. They were no longer simply Korean souvenirs — they became "what that student sent in the winter of that year."

I tucked one more thing into the box: the 전통무늬펜2종-훈민정음 (Traditional Pattern Pen Set of 2 – Hunminjeongeum). It comes with two pens featuring the Hunminjeongeum typeface and traditional patterns in a case. I hadn't decided which professor to give them to, so I just included them. In an office, you can never have too many pens.

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Among the things I had compared was the [한국의아침]김홍도 카페텀블러 - 서당 ([Korean Morning] Kim Hong-do Café Tumbler – Seodang). It features the scene from Kim Hong-do's painting "Seodang" (a traditional village school), so giving it to someone who teaches would be a conversation piece in itself. If you want something the recipient picks up and uses every day, this might be the better fit. I wanted something that would stay in one place for a long time, so I left it out this time.

After They Arrived

The box arrived around the end of the year. The professor who received the doll sent a photo of it placed on their office bookshelf. In the photo they were pointing at the nameplate with a finger, and the message came with a joke that their name was bigger than mine. The professor who received the frame wrote to ask which of the two masks was the yangban, and as I wrote back my reply ended up three times longer than usual.

The doll, the frame, and the pens are all items with little risk of breaking, which made it easy to feel at ease sending them overseas. If you want to send a year-end greeting to someone you haven't been in touch with for a long time, adding a line with a name to something that can occupy one shelf was more than enough.

This account is based on an actual purchase; individuals and institutions have been anonymized and some scenes have been reconstructed.