already??

I didn't realize it was already Chuseok!

Well... Happy Chuseok!

For those not in the know, Chuseok is the Korean harvest festival and a huge national holiday. Lots of food gets eaten; relatives gather and renew their family ties; old and young sit side by side, their chatter bridging past and future.

Well, that's the romantic view, anyway, and something like the above vision still holds true in many families; I know because while I was an English instructor in Korea, it was routine for us to talk about holiday plans, and I saw firsthand that quite a high percentage of young people do sincerely look forward to hanging with family.

But Chuseok isn't all hunky-dory: families leaving Seoul often face 15-hour commutes along routes that would normally take 3-5 hours. During the holiday, the job of food prep for such a massive family gathering is given almost exclusively to the women (this is changing, as you might imagine, but only slowly). These days, many family members don't often hang with each other long into the evening during the holiday; like many Americans in the same age group, the teens and preteens are eager to break away from the old fogeys and go out on the town, perhaps to play video games in PC cafes or to do something a bit less innocent.

The older generation views this fragmentation with a not-unjustified rue: yet another treasured aspect of Korean life seems to be slipping away.

But Koreans are renowned for two paradoxical impulses: an almost childlike eagerness to embrace the new (especially in fashion, food, and technology), and a more ancient impulse to preserve or recover the past. It's amazing to think of all the aspects of ancient Korea that modern Korea has managed to preserve, whether it's tangible items like pottery or brasswork, or intangibles like the mask dance, or older forms of speech.

Chuseok might evolve, but it won't disappear; I trust that Koreans will find ways to preserve it.


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