Happy (belated Chuseok!)
추석 잘 지 내 새요! (I don’t know how to say belated in Korean)

Chuseok – Korea’s Harvest holiday was celebrated yesterday. The day before and after Chuseok are also holidays. In brief Chuseok is a harvest holiday, a very important day for family (paying homage to ancestors and taking care of their burial mounds), and Thanksgiving all rolled up into one. Chuseok is always during a full moon.

Yesterday I went down to the Korean Folk Village to watch the festivities. On the way back up I saw the full moon rising. It was really pretty, prettier than the picture, but I wanted to share it anyway.

Harvest Moon

Here are some more Chuseok pictures. All of these will be familiar to people who’ve been in Korea during Chuseok.

Gift-giving is still a big part of the Chuseok holidays.

Gift giving madness at the grocery stores…
Not sure which pre-packaged box of goodies to bring your family, colleagues or boss? These hanbok-clad women at Lotte mart will be happy to guide you in your purchase and help you wrap up your present. Last year I didn’t notice that often a certain hanbok is associated with a certain product. For example all the maxim coffee representatives wear the same hanbok.

Spam is an ever popular gift pack (I have pictures somewhere that I can’t find…) – which is extremely amusing to most expats living here. Myself included.

Countless gift packs

What shall we choose?

Finally – Songpyeon, a kind of rice cake that is eaten during Chuseok.

They’re usually filled with a paste of sesame seeds or chestnut, and steamed over pine-needles. This is probably in my top five favorite kinds of Korean rice cake.

Ooh – just noticed that Annalog posted about making Songpyeon and the traditions associated with it, as well as a little bit of lore about how your songpyeon shaping skill will affect your future children…

Neat!
Hope everyone had a good Chuseok.