Seollal

Home for the New Year

Seollal is one of the most important holidays for Koreans, in both South and North Korea and across the diaspora. Seol is an old word for a year of age, and New Year’s Day was traditionally when everyone grew a year older. The three-day holiday is used to return to hometowns, visit parents and grandparents, and perform the ancestral rite, charye; in 2016 some 36 million South Koreans were reported to be travelling.

On the first morning, traditional foods are laid on a table as offerings to the ancestors, and the rite begins with deep bows from all the family, who pray for the well-being of everyone in it. Many people wear hanbok, the colourful traditional dress. After the rite comes a large feast, and families play folk games.

Sebae

The best-known custom is sebae. Younger family members, dressed in traditional clothes, bow deeply to their grandparents, parents, aunts and uncles and say saehae bok mani badeuseyo — “please receive a lot of good fortune in the new year”. The elders give crisp new banknotes, sebaet don, often in silk pouches, along with words of wisdom.

Banned and restored

In 1907, under Japanese pressure, the celebration of Seollal was banned, and during colonial rule the official New Year was moved to 1 January. After liberation in 1945, 1 to 3 January became the public New Year holiday. In the 1980s there was widespread support in South Korea for bringing Seollal back: the government made the lunar New Year a “folk day” from 1985 to 1988, and in 1989 restored Seollal as the official Korean New Year and a national holiday.