What is Chuseok? How We Spent Our Autumn Holiday

Chuseok (추석), which literally translates to “Autumn Eve,” is often described as Korea’s Thanksgiving holiday. It is also called Hangawi (한가위), “the great middle of autumn.” A three-day holiday celebrated in September or October each year according to the lunar calendar, Chuseok is one of the two most important holidays of the year and is celebrated in both North and South Korea. (Lunar New Year is the other large, family holiday.) This year, the holiday was a little different as the government raised the level of social distancing guidelines, encouraging Koreans to stay home rather than risk spreading COVID-19 by visiting family around the country.

Important Chuseok Traditions

Like Thanksgiving, Chuseok is a holiday that is characterized by families getting together and eating. However, it also includes a dimension that we would not typically associate with Thanksgiving – formally remembering and honoring the family’s ancestors. For this reason, most Koreans return to their hometowns during Chuseok to participate in a special memorial ceremony with their families. Traffic is notoriusly terrible during Chuseok, so even without the heightened COVID restrictions we would have planned to stay in Seoul for the holiday.

Traditionally, the women of the family would cook together on the eve of the holiday to prepare a lavish table of food for charye on Chuseok morning, each family’s rite to honor their ancestors. We are told that these days, many families count on all members to help with the cooking – not just the women. Because of these important family traditions, it was especially troubling to Koreans not to be able to travel to their hometowns to celebrate Chuseok this year due to COVID concerns.

Several traditional foods are eaten during Chuseok, the most seasonal being songpyeon, a special rice cake kneaded into the shape of a half-moon. These are filled with ingredients such as red beans, chestnuts, or sesame seeds and steamed on a bed of pine needles to give a distinctive flavor. Some other foods are Korean home specialties than can also be found at any time of year, such as jeon (egg pancake) and japchae (stir-fried glass noodles with vegetables).

I was able to buy a few songpyeon so that we could try them. We couldn’t taste easily that they were steamed on pine needles, but as we are fans of all glutinous rice cakes, we thought they were pretty tasty. Ours were filled with a sweet chestnut paste and were very chewy. We also tried Korean pears, which are in season this time of year. Tasted like a very crisp, slightly less sweet apple!

The tradition of giving gifts is also part of Chuseok, and gift sets are very popular. It was fun to see the different sets at the grocery stores and even being sold on the street. Evidently Spam gift sets are popular, and I did see a lot of them. However, they always had so many sales people buzzing around them I could never get a photo! Other sets, such as fruit, coffee, and candy were easier to photograph. There are also sets with beauty products, and this year – hand sanitizer!

We celebrated the three days of Chuseok by visiting some of the Korean cultural sites that re-opened just in time for the holiday. We also got to spend time with a couple of friends we’ve made here, which was a nice feature since this holiday typically is spent with family. Highlights were hiking to Namhansanseong Fortress with David, Amber and Julia, who were members of our church in Virginia about 10 years after we were there, and having dinner and drinks with Peter’s Seoul National University colleague, Yunho Lee.

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National Museum of Korea and the National Hangeul Museum

The extensive National Museum grounds are a park that happily remained open even when the museum was closed for COVID. The National Hangeul Museum shares the same grounds. Both museums re-opened by appointment in late September, so we were able to spend the day before Chuseok on a visit.

The National Museum has an impressive collection of Korean cultural artifacts and art spanning from ancient to modern times. Technology is also utilized to good effect, with several rooms filled with shifting LED screens that make you feel as though you are inside an ancient painting or a king’s decorated tomb. There are also seasonal displays, where we learned that the Chuseok holiday is thought to have originated during the Silla dynasty more than 2,000 years ago.

You might have read in our recent post about Koreans’ pride in their written language, Hangeul. In the Hanguel Museum, you can learn about how King Sejong of the Joseon Dynasty invented Hangeul in the mid-15th century. Prior to this, Koreans wrote using Hanja, Chinese characters. However, only the most educated were able to learn to read and write using this system. King Sejong is said to have boasted that a typical person could learn his new system of writing in a morning. As the current language utilizes only 14 consonants and 10 vowels, this is not an unreasonable claim.

Hangeul is so important in Korea that not only does it have its own museum, it has its own holiday, also celebrated in October. While we learned about this history at the museum, we have also had Koreans tell us about it in everyday conversation. It is important.

Yongsan Family Park

Adjacent to the museum grounds is Yongsan Family Park. I’ve already written about it so won’t add much, but it was a great place to visit on the day of Chuseok. Fortunately, it was a beautiful October day. We initially went to the park because most other sites were closed, but because there were so many families celebrating the holiday outside together, it also turned out to be a very festive place.

National Folk Museum of Korea

The National Folk Museum has displays about everyday life of farmers, scholars, and aristocrats in historic Korea. The indoor displays were fun, with some entertaining dioramas. However, the outside displays really are the best reason to go. An 18th-century farmhouse reconstructed on the grounds and a model of a 1970s village street were fun to see, along with vegetable and flower gardens.

Gyeongbokgung Palace

In the heat of the summer, we were able to see only about half of the Gyeongbokgung Palace grounds. (They don’t call it “the big palace” for nothing!) Since it is located right next door to the Folk Museum, we decided to pay another visit. We were really glad we did, because we saw very cool cultural elements that we missed the first time.

Walking through the lovely park surrounding the palace, we were able to see visitors of all ages wearing hanbok, traditional Korean clothes. There are many places to rent hanbok for a day in Seoul, but with the cultural sites closed since the latest COVID surge in September we hadn’t seen many people wearing them. Not so during Chuseok! We were impressed by the bright colors and fancy embroidery in both the men’s and women’s clothing.

We also had missed on our last visit that the Blue House, the official residence of the President of South Korea, is visible out of the back gate of Gyeongbokgung. Since we made it all the way through the grounds this time, we were surprised by our first real opportunity to see the residence. (Previously, we had seen only the roof while climbing some of the local mountains!) This was an excellent finale to our Chuseok adventures. We walked, we ate, and we learned something new. Perfect holiday!

You can visit Flickr to see more photos of the National Museum of Korea and grounds and the National Folk Museum & Gyeongbokgung.