Chuseok(추석) in 🇰🇷 South Korea

Chuseok, celebrated on the 15th day of the eighth month of the Korean lunar calendar, is one of South Korea's two most important traditional holidays alongside Lunar New Year. Often called Korean Thanksgiving, Chuseok is a harvest festival and a time for families to gather, honor ancestors, and give thanks for the year's abundance. The holiday period spans three days, creating a long weekend that triggers the largest annual migration within the country.

The ancestral memorial rite, known as charye, is the spiritual heart of Chuseok. Families prepare an elaborate table of food offerings and perform a formal ritual to honor deceased ancestors. The ritual table follows specific rules about the placement of dishes, with rice, soup, meat, fish, vegetables, fruit, and rice cakes arranged according to tradition. The eldest son's home typically serves as the gathering place for the extended family.

Songpyeon, half-moon shaped rice cakes filled with sesame seeds, chestnuts, or sweet red bean paste, are the signature Chuseok food. Families gather on the eve of Chuseok to make songpyeon together, steaming them on a bed of pine needles that imparts a distinctive fragrance. The belief that making beautiful songpyeon will lead to finding a good spouse motivates careful craftsmanship. Other Chuseok foods include japchae (glass noodles), jeon (savory pancakes), and galbi (marinated short ribs).

Traditional Chuseok activities include beolcho, visiting family graves to trim grass and tidy the burial sites, and ganggangsullae, a circle dance performed by women under the full moon that dates back centuries. Modern Chuseok also involves gift-giving, with popular presents including premium fruit sets, hanwoo beef, health supplements, and gift certificates. The mass migration of millions of Koreans returning to their hometowns creates legendary traffic jams on the nation's highways.

Major Korean harvest festival celebrated over three days around the autumn full moon, with family reunions, ancestral rites, songpyeon rice cakes, folk games, and visits to hometowns.