Korean festival

Festivals  

         Until the mid-20th century, Korea was primarily an agricultural society, and the seasonal rhythms of daily life were organized by the lunar calendar. As a society where farming was hugely important for the subsistence of its members, it developed a great variety of semi-religious events where prayers were offered for a good harvest and abundant food, and which gradually developed into communal celebrations and festivals. 

         The Lunar New Years Day (Seol or Seollal), which is generally regarded as the most important of all the traditional seasonal festivals, is celebrated with a special festival food called tteokguk, or a rice flake soup. Eating it signified becoming one year older (this means that a child born on the 29th of the twelfth lunar month becomes two years old only two days later). The festival is also related with the ceremony of performing the Sebae (New Years Bow) before the elders of one family and neighborhood. After Sebae, the elders present New Years gift money to their juniors. 

        Another important seasonal festival called Daeboreum (Greater Full Moon) celebrates the fifteenth day of the first month of the year by the lunar calendar. On that day, people eat special festival food called ogokbap, a dish made with five grains and served with an assortment of cooked vegetables, play games aimed for the unity of the local community and perform rituals for good harvest. Chuseok, which is held on the fifteenth day of the eighth lunar month, consists of thanksgiving services in which newly harvested crops and fruits are offered to the ancestral spirits. Generally held to be as important as the Lunar New Years Day, Chuseok is also one of the two annuals occasions when all the family members gather together. 

 

Sebae(New Year Bow). Korea has a long tradition of starting the New Year (by the lunar calendar) with the ceremonious bows made by children to their parents