It’s that time of the year with Chuseok, (the Korean Harvest Moon Festival) right around the corner.
This year, Chuseok will be observed Sept. 12-14, with the holiday on Friday, and the day before and after celebrated as National Holidays, too.
Koreans, like many agrarian cultures, once followed the lunar calendar, but in recent history, they have deferred to the solar calendar in line with international practice.
While public holidays are based on the solar calendar, there are a few days that are celebrated based on the lunar calendar.
These are the two most important traditional holidays, the Korean New Year’s Day (the first day of the first lunar month) and Chuseok, the Harvest Moon Festival (fifteenth day of the eighth lunar month).
En mass a substantial part of the population travel. For many, this means going back to their home villages. Over the holiday they perform ancestral rituals at the graves of relatives as well as share time with their family over traditional foods. Others may opt to travel overseas, or a popular trend has been to staycation in a luxury hotel.
For your Korean colleagues (in Korea), you can wish them a happy Chuseok while they are still in their office, so this coming Tuesday, September 11 in the West (which will be Wednesday AM in Korea).
Again, for most Koreans the holiday break will begin Wednesday Korea time at the end of day through the weekend. Some may take extra days off that week.
For expat Koreans working outside Korea, you can wish them happy Chuseok on the actual holiday, Friday September 13.
If you’d like to try, here’s a common greeting:
Chuseok jal ji nae sae yo.
Happy Chuseok works fine, too.
Even though many things have been changed by Korea’s rapid industrialization, urbanization, and globalization we find in the celebration of Chuseok that family remains one of the bedrocks of Korean society.
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