14 May 2010, Posted by Matt in Art & Culture, Best of DK.com, Festivals & Holidays, Historic Korea, Seoul, UNESCO Sites, 2 Comments

The Jongmyo Royal Shrine’s Great Rite

When King Taejo founded the Joseon Dynasty in 1394, he built the Jongmyo Royal Shrine to honor his ancestors. Each May, Korea’s royal Confucian ancestral rites are opened to the public.

01 Oct 2009, Posted by Matt in Festivals & Holidays, Food & Drink, Gyeonggi, Seoul, 3 Comments

Happy Chuseok 2009!

The onset of autumn each year in Seoul often means an uncharacteristic calm and quiet in the city. No, it’s not that over 10 million residents decide to slow down to watch the leaves change. It’s because late September or early October marks Chuseok (추석), Korea’s annual thanksgiving holiday that’s among the most important dates on the Korean calendar.

(more…)

04 Jul 2009, Posted by Matt in Food & Drink, Historic Korea, Seoul, Video, 2 Comments

Old Seoul’s Pimatgol

Seoul is always changing. In what feels like just weeks an old neighborhood is razed and huge new apartment towers stand in its place. This dynamism is part of the city’s excitement. But in this relentless push forward, too many of Seoul’s most historic areas are being destroyed. One example is Pimatgol (피맛골), located in the central Jongno District.
(more…)

24 Feb 2009, Posted by Matt in Art & Culture, Buddhist Temples, Chungcheong, Gyeongsang, Seoul, 0 Comments

Korea Travel Expo 2009

This past weekend, southern Seoul’s COEX center hosted the sixth annual Korea Travel Expo.

The historically weak Korean won and global economic crisis has many Koreans looking at domestic travel destinations instead of holidays in Southeast Asia or the U.S. To meet their needs, this past weekend the Korea Travel Expo 2009 (site in Korean) hosted its sixth annual event at the Atlantic Hall of the COEX center in southern Seoul.

Nearly 500 booths representing 280 different regional governments, transportation companies and local festivals took part in the nation’s largest expo promoting domestic tourism. This being Korea, several booths offered free samples of indigenous liquor.

(more…)

26 Jan 2009, Posted by Matt in Festivals & Holidays, Food & Drink, Gangwon, Gyeonggi, Gyeongsang, Seoul, Transportation, 0 Comments

Seollal: The Korean New Year

A photo of a man with an ox in Korea, 1972 (photo from here).

Well, by now you may already know that Koreans use two calendars, one that’s solar and the another that’s lunar-based. So while Korea celebrated the near year on January 1st with much of the rest of the world, today, Monday, January 26th, marks the first day of the lunar calendar.

This special day is called Seollal (설날), and many say it’s Koreans’ favorite holiday. This new year is called gichungnyeon (기충년), or the year of the ox. The ox symbolizes diligence and sincerity, patience, hardwork and modesty… probably behavior we should all practice during these economic times.

(more…)

14 Sep 2008, Posted by Matt in Festivals & Holidays, Food & Drink, Gyeongsang, Seoul, Transportation, 1 Comments

Chuseok: The Full Moon Festival

During Chuseok, my family conducted an early morning ancestral worship ritual. Afterwards, everyone enjoyed a feast!

The Korean calendar is a hybrid one. It’s a mix of the Gregorian calendar, which begins on January 1st, and a luni-solar calendar that begins on the first new moon of the year. The result is a mix of holidays- so, while Korean Independence Day always falls on August 15th, a traditional holiday like the harvest festival Chuseok (추석), occurs on the 15th day of the 8th lunar month, which means sometime in September or early October.

This year, Chuseok, which is also known as Hangawi (한가위), falls on September 14th. The days before and after are combined to create one of Korea’s four main traditional holidays. This weekend, tens of millions of Koreans are returning to their ancestral hometowns to be among family and friends. Traditional rites include an early morning ancestral worship ritual and the tending of family tombs, called beolcho (벌초).

(more…)