Traditional Hair Care

Start with the festival table. Dano falls on the fifth day of the fifth lunar month, which the Encyclopedia of Korean Culture describes as the peak of yang energy, just before the summer heat. The food is seasonal: rice cakes made with mugwort or surichwi, and a cool, honey-sweetened drink called jeho-tang. See seasonal foods and the mugwort page for the herb side of the day. The same entry then turns to grooming.

Washing hair in sweet flag

At Dano, according to the encyclopedia, people went to ponds or streams and washed their hair in changpo-tang (창포탕), a broth made by boiling sweet flag (changpo, 창포). They believed it kept hair thick, glossy and less prone to falling out, and some drank the broth for health, while dew collected from the plant was used as a cosmetic water. The wider set of customs, danojang (단오장), included washing the hair and face in changpo water, putting on fresh blue clothes and wearing a hairpin carved from changpo root. It was meant to ward off evil, and red rouge on the cheeks belonged to it for the same reason.

This is custom and belief, and the evidence status is weak. I did not find a human study of sweet flag on hair. The one hair-growth study that came up was in mice and tested a multi-plant extract, so it cannot be credited to sweet flag alone. There is also a safety question: a 2021 toxicology review in the Journal of Applied Toxicology found that cardiotoxicity, hepatotoxicity, reproductive toxicity, mutagenicity and carcinogenicity have been described for the propenylic asarone compounds found in Acorus calamus, with varying reliability, and that officials have restricted or issued recommendations on its use. The review also says efficacy and safety in humans are still not known. This page describes a historical custom and does not recommend making it at home.

Oils and pins

Daily care ran on oil. The encyclopedia entry on hair oils lists camellia, cornel, castor and perilla seed oils, and a beeswax pomade (mil-gireum), and notes that perilla oil was brushed onto a comb and dried before combing, for a lasting dark sheen. See camellia oil, and the kitchen-side cousins in sesame and perilla oils. Many households made their own oils, though some were sold.

The binyeo (비녀) was both a tool and a status marker. The Encyclopedia of Korean Culture says women used it to keep a bun from loosening and to fasten a crown or a hairpiece, and that pins were made of gold, silver, jade or coral for the upper classes and of wood, bamboo, horn or bone among commoners. Pin heads carried auspicious motifs for wealth, long life and many sons. In mid-Joseon the tall, hairpiece-based eonjeun meori was popular, and the government banned it repeatedly under Yeongjo and Jeongjo because of its cost. By the middle of Sunjo's reign, a bun pinned at the back of the head, the jjokjin meori, was the common style, and the pin became its ornament. The hairpiece (gache) story also appears in Joseon cosmetics.

Hair as scalp care today

Today the conversation has moved from the strand to the scalp. Asia Economy reported, citing the Korea International Trade Association's K-STAT, that Korea's hair-product exports from January to November 2025 reached about $430.78 million, up 15.5 percent and already above 2024's full-year figure of about $413.07 million. It ties the growth to “skinification,” the habit of caring for the scalp as one would facial skin, with exports shifting from basic shampoos toward scalp treatments, essences and hair-loss products. An industry source in the article says the shift is driven by seeing the scalp as an extension of skin. These are trade figures and one reporter's account, not a measure of how many Koreans have changed their routines. For the face-care version of the same idea, see the K-beauty routine.

The thread

• Dano: hair washing tied to a seasonal food calendar, in custom rather than medicine.
• Oils and pins: a documented material culture of seed oils, wax pomade and hairpins marked by rank.
• Evidence: the beliefs are historical; the modern products are marketed, and few have large published trials in the sources reviewed.