Though many thousands years of long history of Korea, many changes have taken place in politics, economy, culture, religion, arts and science, but the writer, in this thesis, has traced historical development of footwear that common people use as one of necessities of human life. Since the footwear is included in clothing, the history of footwear may be also traced along with the history of clothing. In the beginning, the shoes were only made to serve the purpose of protection of feet. As time passed by, the purpose gradually developed the skill in making shoes. Taking a historical of straw and hemp into consideration, I have studied on shoes using straw and hemp in this thesis. The history of straw and hemp can be retroacted to the beginning stage of the human culture. These straw and hemp have been developed over and over again for long time and it has its own distintion inquality so that these refined products used by noble men and these careless ones were used by the common people. In Japan, these straw and hemp were effected by the influence of typical continental climate, made characteristic shape. Since 1930s rubber shoes were introduced to Korea and traditional Korean shoes came to disappear in Korean market. Because of this, we now can see the traditional Korean shoes only in the windows of Museum.