Ok, I am not a pro on Chuseok, but I will tell you what I know. This past Sunday, 14 September was Chuseok. Chuseok is to Koreans as Thanksgiving is to Americans, from what I understand. Everyone leaves town in masses to go see family in other parts of the country. The children love eating ddok pronounced duck, Korean rice cakes made several different ways. On Chuseok Koreans dress in han-boks, traditional Koean clothing. They set a place at the table for their ancestors and they go visit the graves of their ancestors. The definition from Wikipedia is as follows.....
Chuseok, originally known as Hangawi (한가위) is a major harvest festival and a three-day holiday in Korea celebrated on the 15th day of the 8th month of the lunar Korean Calendar. As a celebration of the good harvest, Koreans visit their ancestral hometowns and share a feast of Korean traditional food.
It goes on to say….
In modern South Korean, on Chuseok there is a mass exodus of Koreans returning to their hometowns to pay respects to the spirits of one's ancestors. People perform ancestral worship rituals early in the morning. They often visit the tombs of their immediate ancestors to trim plants and clean the area around the tomb, and offer food, drink, and crops to their ancestors. Harvest crops are attributed to the blessing of ancestors.
So there you have it Chuseok. The pictures below are from Boy 2's Chuseok party at school, the first is of the table full of food you eat at Chuseok (with a little American twist) and the second is of a little girl dress in a han-bok.
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