Celebrating Chuseok

 

Songpyeon

Chuseok, is also called Korea’s annual thanksgiving holiday, and is one of the biggest migration events in modern Korea. Over half of the population visits families and ancestral graves during the holiday.

 

 

 

 Families living in big cities like Seoul make a massive exodus by car, express bus, train, airplane, and ferry. There are long lines of cars leaving Seoul on the days preceding Chuseok, causing massive traffic jams on the freeways and major rural routes. Last year a trip by car from Seoul to Busan, which usually takes about five hours, was reported as taking as long as 20 hours!

Festive occasions, such as Chuseok, demonstrate the importance of family to Korean society. Family members, usually from the paternal line, get together to prepare food, honor their ancestors, and cherish relatives, both living and deceased. Chuseok is a reminder that families are connected and bonded in the same fortune and ancestors live through the offspring as part of people’s daily lives.

These days metropolis Seoul with its 23 million inhabitants is calm and empty…….





 
On our way to the subway.......


The normally so very crowded relaxing square with Samsung d'light office building

Entrance 8 to Gangnam subway station.

 

 

The many, many shops were closed and all the people on there way to the country side and we on our way to Yongsan Base!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In the meantime ........

Are Holiday festivities a lot of work and begin many days before the actual holiday, as women busily prepare food to be put on the ancestral plate for the Chuseok ceremony. They begin preparations for the festivities weeks in advance by going to the market to buy the newly harvested rice, apples, crisp pears, juju beans, chestnuts, sesame seeds, pine needles, and so on. You might wonder why people need pine needles. Koreans, like many people from traditional cultures around the world, celebrate holidays with special food. Pine needles are an essential ingredient of the Korean rice cakes called song pyun. These cakes are made with finely ground new rice as the basic dough, which is filled with toasted sesame seeds, chestnuts, or peas sweetened with honey or sugar.



 

 

Traditionell Korean dishes.

 

 

 



Anders and I, together with other guests, were invited to Scholar and Mrs. Ha, Yeon-soon to celebrate Chuseok with a special Chuseok Dinner.



 

 

 

Our Host Scholar Ha, Chairman of the KumGok Academico-Cultural Foundation and our Hostess Mrs. Ha, Yeon-soon 

 

Scholar Ha and his fabulous assistant and translator. 

 

 

 

Leadership representatives for the 8th Army, a division supported by the Foundation in appriciation for everything they have done and do to keep the Armistice for the past 60 years.

Below:MG Golden and his wife Jo-Anne in a beautiful Hanbok. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Conversations among the guests while enjoying appetisers and pink (:)) Champagne in the tranquility of an oasis in the heart of Seoul.        

            

 

Host and some of his guests ringing in the Chuseok dinner and saying your thanks, for me it became a long ;=) speech for I have a lot to be thankful for!

 

   

 

 

 

Because we'll be leaving soon Anders received good wishes in Hangul

    

                   

 

After dinner we were treated to enjoy some music, performed by three talented young women playing  the Gayageum.

The gayageum is a stringed instrument (geum) of Gaya, an ancient country located in the southern part of the Korean peninsula. According to the History of Three Kingdoms, King Gasil of the Gaya dynasty created the gayageum based on a Chinese instrument. The instrument has twelve strings placed on movable bridges and the right hand makes the sound while the left hand makes the tunes.

 

             

A big hand for the fabulous culinary team that made a tasty Thanksgiving (Chuseok) dinner.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Chuseok (Korean: 추석), is originally known as hangawi (한가위, from archaic Korean for "the great middle (of autumn)"), is a major harvest festival and a three-day holiday in Korea celebrated on the 15th day of the 8th month of the lunar calendar. Like many other harvest festivals, it is held around the Autumn Equinox.  As a celebration of the good harvest, Koreans visit their ancestral hometowns and share a feast of Korean traditional food such as songpyeon and rice wines such as sindoju and dongdongju.