Happy Chuseok!

Today marks the beginning of Chuseok, the Korean Thanksgiving holiday. It is the major holiday of the year for Korea and is also known as the Harvest Moon Festival. Since the dates for Chuseok are based on the lunar calendar (the 15th day of the 8th lunar month each year) the dates change year to year and this year it is from 10/5 to 10/7.

There are many traditions that follow the Chuseok holiday and the main one is for people to return to their hometowns to pay respects to their ancestors. This usually results in major traffic jams as millions of people attempt to leave Seoul to the outskirting towns of their family origins. It also means that most businesses will close down for at least a 3 day period. If you throw in the National Foundation Day holiday that occurred on 10/3, you're looking at about a whole week off from work!

Once they reach their destinations, people will partake in traditions such as wearing hanbok, playing traditional games, paying respects and giving thanks to their ancestors, and most of all....eating! There's even a correct way to laying out food for the ancestors according to this Chosun Ilbo article. The most traditional food to eat during Chuseok is "songpyeon" which is a crescent shaped rice cake.
Chuseok also marks the time for a very busy movie season as lots of popcorn crowd pleasing movies are released. Choices this year include the gangster comedy Marrying the Mafia 3 (which will also be playing at this Fall's Hawaii International Film Festival at which star Shin Hyeon Joon will appear), the gambling drama Jjak Pae (which I hear is very good), the romantic drama Our Happy Time, as well as foreign films like Jackie Chan's latest as well as some American films.

Have a Happy Chuseok everyone!