Chuseok

Today, September 25, is Chuseok (추석 秋夕). Chuseok (pronounced CHOO-suck) is the autumn harvest festival (equivalent to the Chinese Mid-Autumn Festival), and one of the biggest holidays in Korea. Most people have three days off of work, and because this year Chuseok falls on a Tuesday, that makes a five-day weekend for many people. Most shops and restaurants are closed, and large numbers of Seoul residents head out of the city to spend the holiday with their families in the outer cities and villages. Chuseok is sometimes referred to as the Korean Thanksgiving.

It's an odd time to arrive in Seoul and try to get settled. We moved into our apartment Thursday night. So we've spent the last few days not just getting settled, but also provisioning as the city has emptied out, so that we can survive a day or two without access to grocery stores or restaurants. Our apartment building has seemed completely deserted apart from the security guard. It's not clear if this is because (a) no one but us is living here; (b) everyone has gone away for Chuseok; (c) the residents keep very strange hours.

Of course, not everyone has left Seoul for the holiday, and the ex-pats living here don't have family homes in the countryside to return to. There are a few things going on around town for those with nothing else to do. At Erma's mother's suggestion, the two of us took a bus from our neighborhood to the Gyeongbok Palace, one of the major historical sites in the city. It seemed that half the population had the same idea we did.

As we arrived at the main gate of the palace compound, it turned out we were just in time for the ceremonial changing of the guard, a reenactment of the traditional royal ceremony from the days of the Choseon Dynasty. I really like the bright red and blue outfits of the palace guard.





The palace is pretty spectacular. Since 1990, the government has been working to restore it. (Much of it was destroyed by the Japanese during the occupation of the first half of the 20th century. What they were destroying was itself a rebuilding of the original palace that the Japanese had originally destroyed in the 16th century.) Here's a picture that shows the main palace hall against the backdrop of one of the hills north of the city.

For Chuseok, there was a special set-up on the palace grounds illustrating five traditional Korean games. All were interactive. The most exciting to watch was top-spinning. The traditional Korean top, a paeng-i, is made of wood. It has a cylindrical top part that gently tapers to a point at the bottom. The top is spun with a stick to which a length of ribbon is affixed. The ribbon is wound around the top, then pulled free with a rapid yank on the stick, setting the top spinning. The top can be kept spinning by skillful whipping -- the right kind of wrist flick will lash the ribbon against the spinning top, providing additional force.

The red signboard explains the history of the game and how it is played. Kids are playing with the tops on the blue tarp. For the most part the kids were terrible at it. It's clear that this traditional game is not widely practiced in the era of Xboxes.

There was one middle-aged man, however, who was quite impressive. He was able to whip his spinning top to a formidable speed. Probably he'd been quite adept at it as a child. In the photo, his stick is moving so fast that it's not even visible.


Quite a few children were dressed up in traditional Korean garb for the holiday. The general result of this was intense cuteness. Here's a little girl in a pink hanbok, and a small boy in a blue hanbok.


The little boy seemed to be all on his own. When I took the picture he was wandering happily through the grounds, hugging the large pillars along one of the covered walkways. We figured his parents were nearby. A few minutes later we stepped through a gate, and saw a young woman in a yellow and red hanbok running around frantically, tears streaming down her cheeks, crying out a child's name over and over again. Erma and I both had the same thought -- maybe the boy we'd seen, and photographed, was hers. We walked back through the gate, but the little boy had disappeared. After a few moments we saw a teenage boy carrying the little boy back toward us. The teenager had apparently realized that this little kid had lost his parents, and was helping him look for them. Just at this moment the frantic mother reappeared, running and wailing. Erma and I looked at the boys and pointed the mother out to them; moments later the family was happily reunited.