Chuseok Vacation

So every year Koreans celebrate a holiday of reconnecting with family, thanking the ancestors for abundant harvests and sharing in that abundance with family, neighbours and friends. This holiday, called Chuseok 추석, is held according to the lunisolar calendar calendar, which is a bit different than our Gregorian calendar, to coincide with the full moon of harvest. This is because the Koreans hold a calendar which traces significant events according to lunar cycles which have been downplayed in Western cultures.
Everyone (apparently not taxi or bus drivers) gets three days off of work and they typically return to their grandparents houses (or parents, eldest son in the family, whoever is the oldest surviving male member of the family). Which means the roads everywhere are crazy! People travel all around the country to be at their ancestors houses. Luckily, people living in Sokcho often live in or near their grandparents-or their family is in North Korea and so can not visit their family. So the roads around here were not marked by the same chaos that ensnares the rest of the country.

Charye ceremony table

Songpyeon, absolutely delicious Korean rice dumplings

On the morning of Chuseok Day, Songpyeon 송편 (a type of rice dumpling), fruits and other foods are prepared and set out on offeratory tables to give thanks to the ancestors (in an ancestor memorial service called Charye 차례). After Charye, families visit their ancestors’ graves and hold a ritual of clearing the weeds that have grown up over the burial mounds in an event called Bolcho 벌초. After dusk Koreans usually take walks watch the full harvest moon.
Some towns and families still play folk games and hold traditional sporting events. A Korean circle dance called Ganggangsullae was always a large part of the event. In this dance, women dress in Hanbok (traditional Korean clothing) join hands in a circle and sing together. This dance was always stronger in the traditional village structure but is not practised in majour Korean cities anymore.

Sharing in tradition with the young

An old photo of a Chuseok celebration, love their outfits! Actually this picture is from 1967!

Another interesting though also waning part of the celebrations are the wrestling matches. Traditionally, during the Chuseok holidays the strongest people in each village gather together to hold wrestling competitions. During the match, two competitors face each other in the middle of a circular sandpit surrounded by the villagers. The last undefeated wrestler after a series of competitions is considered the winner and is named the village’s strongest man, taking home cotton, rice, or a calf as his prize. Today, Sireum (씨름 Korean wrestling) competitions are held around the time of Chuseok to determine the strongest man in Korea, but the competitions are not as big a part of the celebrations as they once were.
In the past, in preparation for Chuseok, the head of each household would buy new clothes for everyone in the house, including the servants. This custom is known as Chuseokbim and is still practiced today. These days, however, most families purchase clothing from department stores or boutiques instead of exchanging traditional clothing, which is a shame, though we all like new suits.

Sireum-Korean wrestling, the precursor to Japan's Sumo

Family honouring their dead in the mountains.

However, as we are not Korean and do not have many Korean friends in town yet and so nobody challenged us to wrestle or share in eating rice dumplings, so we had a quiet long weekend to ourselves. Making our own food and watching the full moon, receiving gifts from the local restaurant owner, who has taken to us, and our employer. The last day of Chuseok was spent hiking into the Seorak mountains where we reached the top of the mountain we can see from our apartment window and picnicking beside the cold mountain stream. We ended our holiday by lounging on the beach and taking in some good eating in the restaurant district of town (which we only recently discovered!). Two days off work and plenty of fresh air, thank you Korea for having such a great little holiday, happy chuseok to all and to all a good night.

Big news here in Korea, kids will be free of uniforms!

Students to be freed from dress codes

Primary and secondary school students in Seoul will be able to abandon their drab uniform to freely choose what to wear and how to style their hair from next year, the Seoul Metropolitan Office of Education said Wednesday.

The education office announced a new ordinance draft designed to promote students’ basic human rights. Under the ordinance, which it plans to seek approval at the Seoul Metropolitan Council in November, restrictions on dress codes, hairstyles and even rallies inside campus will be abolished.

At the same time, they will be able to carry cellular phones and other electronic gadgets at their own discretion.

The ordinance strictly bans teachers from using any forms of physical punishment on students. The ban on corporal punishment will also be applied to private cram schools or “hagwon,” it said.

The ordinance also bans schools from obliging students to attend after-hour classes.

After holding a series of hearings the education office will finalize the ordinance next month.

Korea Times-Sep 7, 2011

I remember that this was always a big issue here in Korea as schooling was a very militant and strict thing to go through for children. After years of abuse by teachers, both physical and psychological, it looks like the Koreans are not going to stand for this anymore. Maybe the drafters of this plan had bad memories of their own childhood and wanted it stopped for future generations or possibly the old boys club had a few grandkids who were affected recently. All we know is that it is out with the old uniforms and in with what I grew up with. I am pleased to see that kids will not have their hair forcibly cut by teachers and principals, or that the nasty detention scandals will be lessened and that the brutal physical abuse which characterized Korean schools will no longer be tolerated by the government. As to how the old guard actually respond to this remains to be seen, but for now lets celebrate for the newest generation of Koreans and their newly found freedoms!!

Annyeong to you dear reader

안녕 An-nyeong! (Hello)

So now we live in great little city named Sokcho 속초. This is a wonderful little place perched on the West coast of the East Sea, or more commonly known as the Sea of Japan. The city is quite near the north Korean border and thus has a few military protocols other more southern cities do not experience (such as beach curfews, more on this later).

Daechong mountain, heart of Seoraksan

As the city motto says: "where mountains, the sea and lakes come together", this is a great spot to be in. Far removed by geography from any major city, industry or agribiz-agriculture, here in Sokcho we breathe clean air and have great water quality. I was surprised by how close this city is to the Seorak mountains. These are South Korea's premiere hiking destinations and an abode for nature lovers like us. We have ventured into the smaller surrounding hills and checked out both lakes in town but have yet to really explore the back country, I think that might be this weekend!

Ulsan Rock, we see this everyday!

We were a bit surprised by our apartment, which is small by our whacky Western standards, though it has all we need and is much more spacious then our friends apartments in Japan and some of the bigger Korean cities. But the apartment has a nice easy to clean and simple layout so that we can always us the space efficiently, and also learn to live a more Korean lifestyle (mostly on the floor haha).The best part of our new home is that from our couch we can see Ulsan rock, a scenic craggy peak of the range that looms over our town. This rock is the background picture for the blog at the time being.

The Ssang River, great spot to catch mountain trout

So While Josh explores, fishes for our dinners, and learns Korean (teaching some days), Jackie is busy working with students to prepare English speeches for the school English speech competitions, though we have a lot of spare time to hang out together and eat great food and learn Korean. The school is a great place run by a Canadian and Korean couple who are great people to work with.

Our new town

So, for now, there is so much to say and write about so how about we let this just be an introduction to life here in Sokcho. The blog will cover the town, our adventures, elements of Korean culture and food (our favourite Asian diet) and more from the realm of ideas and what it means to be human. So this is not merely a travel blog, we hope it is a venue where people come to learn about something other than their mundane routine in many ways. For now this is Jackie and Josh wishing you well.
안녕히 가십시오 Annyeonghee gashipshio (Goodbye)

A chunk of the Seorak mountains