Chuseok is the Korean autumn harvest festival, the closest cultural cousin to American Thanksgiving. Three days of family, food, ancestor rites, and rest. In Korea the country shuts down. In the Bay Area diaspora, chuseok lands on a Wednesday and the kids have school. The adaptation problem is real.
Our family has been doing chuseok in the Bay Area for over thirty years. The version we run now is not the version Youngsook grew up with in Korea. It is also not the half hearted "let's just order Korean takeout" version that some diaspora families settle into. This piece is the working in between.
What chuseok is, briefly
Chuseok (추석) is the 15th day of the 8th lunar month, usually mid September to early October on the Western calendar. The holiday goes back at least a thousand years and centers on three things: ancestor rites (charye), family gathering, and the autumn harvest.
The traditional Korean chuseok includes morning charye (the family ancestor rite with a ceremonial table of food), a visit to family graves (seongmyo), the sharing of songpyeon (the half moon rice cake that defines chuseok), and the gathering of the extended family for meals and games over three days.
The diaspora chuseok keeps some of these and lets others go. The choice of which to keep is the family's, not the calendar's.
The diaspora adaptation problem
The first problem is the date. Chuseok rarely falls on a weekend. The 2026 chuseok is on a Wednesday, October 5. The kids have school. The adults have work. The extended family is scattered across the country. A traditional three day observance is impossible.
The second problem is the family. Traditional chuseok depends on the extended family being in one place. For Korean Americans, the extended family is often split between Korea, the East Coast, the West Coast, and sometimes other countries. A real gathering takes planning.
The third problem is the rites. The charye table requires specific foods, specific arrangement, and specific knowledge that not every diaspora family carries forward. The seongmyo (grave visit) is impossible if the ancestors are buried in Korea.
The fourth problem is the children. The chuseok we grew up with assumes children who speak Korean, who recognize the foods, who understand the ancestor rites. Diaspora children often do not. The adaptation has to teach as it celebrates.
What we keep
After thirty years of running chuseok in the Bay Area, here is what our family keeps.
The songpyeon. The half moon rice cakes filled with sesame seeds and honey, sweet red bean paste, or chestnut. Youngsook makes them. The kids help shape them. The shaping is the point. A clean half moon is supposed to predict a beautiful daughter or a handsome son. The kids learn this once and remember it forever.
The family meal. We do one big chuseok dinner on the Saturday closest to the actual date, not on the lunar date itself. Five generations of relatives if we can. Korean food at the center: japchae, jeon (the savory pancakes), galbi, namul, and rice. American Thanksgiving food if the date is close enough to overlap.
The light ancestor rite. We do a simplified charye at the dinner table before the meal. A small ceremonial plate of food set aside for the ancestors, a moment of silence, a few words from the eldest family member about the year and the people we have lost. No full traditional charye table. No deep bows. The acknowledgment is the point.
The story. Every chuseok dinner, Youngsook tells a story about her own chuseok in Korea as a child. The same stories often. The kids and grandkids hear them. They will tell them to their own children.
For more on building cultural ritual into family life, see our piece on teaching Korean to diaspora kids.
What we let go
We do not do the morning charye. The full traditional ancestor rite requires a specific food arrangement, knowledge of the family bloodline order, and several hours. We do the abbreviated dinner version above instead.
We do not do seongmyo. Our ancestors are buried in Korea. The visit is not realistic every year. We do call living elders in Korea on chuseok morning. That is the diaspora version of the visit.
We do not do the three day observance. One day. One meal. The kids are back in school the next morning.
We do not insist on Korean only food. The chuseok meal is mostly Korean, but the dessert is often pumpkin pie because the timing overlaps with American autumn and the kids like it. We made peace with this.
The songpyeon ritual is the keeper
If a diaspora family is going to keep one thing about chuseok, keep the songpyeon. It is the most teachable element and the most memorable for kids.
The recipe in short. Mix glutinous rice flour with hot water to make a dough. Knead it until smooth. Pinch off small balls. Press a thumb into each ball to make a small bowl. Fill with sesame seeds and brown sugar, or red bean paste, or chestnut. Pinch the dough closed into a half moon shape. Steam on a bed of pine needles (or parchment paper if pine needles are not available) for 20 minutes.
The pine needles are the traditional touch. They give the songpyeon a faint pine scent that is the signature of chuseok. A Korean grocery in the Bay Area will sometimes carry fresh pine needles in September. If not, parchment is fine.
Kids should help. The shaping is the heart of the holiday. A four year old can press the dough and pinch the half moon shape. A ten year old can fill them. A teenager can lead the whole batch.
The first time we made songpyeon as a family with our grandkids, the kids ate three each and asked for more the next day. The recipe became part of the family's October rhythm.
The charye table, simplified for diaspora
If your family wants to do a light charye, the simplified version goes like this.
Set a small dedicated table or a clear corner of the main dinner table. Place a small framed photo of the most recently lost family member (or several, if appropriate). In front of the photo, set a small bowl of rice, a small bowl of soup, a few pieces of the meal that you cooked, a small cup of tea or rice wine. The food should be the food you are eating, not a separate ceremonial menu.
Light a candle. The family gathers. The eldest family member says a few words. A moment of silence. The family bows once toward the photo (a single deep bow is enough; the traditional charye has multiple bows in specific order, but the single bow is the simplified diaspora version). The candle stays lit through the meal.
After the meal, the food set aside for the ancestors is shared with the family, not discarded. The sharing is the closure.
This version is shorter than the traditional charye but it does the same work: the conscious acknowledgment of the dead at a family meal. The acknowledgment is the durable part of the ritual.
What to wear at chuseok
Hanbok at chuseok is increasingly rare in the diaspora and more common in Korea. For our family, we keep it casual. The kids might wear modern hanbok jeogori tops with regular jeans. The adults wear nice clothes but rarely full ceremonial hanbok.
For families who want to bring hanbok back into chuseok, this is a great low pressure occasion to wear modern hanbok. Daily wear hanbok in cotton or modal blend is appropriate, comfortable, and photographs beautifully against autumn light. See our note on modern hanbok at family gatherings.
The kids in particular benefit from wearing some kind of hanbok element at chuseok even if not the full traditional dress. A jeogori top with everyday pants signals the holiday without being overproduced.
The food calendar
The chuseok meal usually includes some subset of the following.
Songpyeon. Always. Japchae. The sweet potato noodles with vegetables and beef. Most common. Jeon. Savory pancakes with kimchi, scallion, zucchini, or fish. Variety matters; a small platter of three or four kinds. Galbi or bulgogi. The grilled marinated meat. Namul. Three or four kinds of seasoned vegetables (spinach, bean sprouts, fernbrake, doraji). Toranguk or other soup. The soup of chuseok varies by family. Our family does toranguk (taro stem soup) when the taro is in season. Steamed rice. Side dishes (banchan) including kimchi. Fresh fruit. Korean pears, apples, persimmons. The pear (bae) and persimmon (gam) are autumn fruits and specifically chuseok appropriate. A few American autumn additions if the family includes mixed heritage members. Sweet potatoes, butternut squash, sometimes pumpkin pie.
For the deep dive on building the Korean meal architecture, see Youngsook's banchan deep dive (forthcoming). For the soondubu stew that often appears as a side meal in the chuseok week, see our soondubu recipe.
What to do if your family has mixed heritage
The mixed heritage chuseok is more and more common in our community. A few notes.
Invite the non Korean side. Chuseok is family. The whole family.
Brief them in advance. Send a one paragraph note explaining what chuseok is, what to expect, what to bring (often nothing, but a contribution if they want is welcome). The brief does the work of one awkward dinner question.
Mix the food. Korean and American both on the table. Nobody minds the pumpkin pie next to the songpyeon. The combination is part of the diaspora dinner.
Have one ritual. Even a small one. The candle, the bow, the moment of silence. The non Korean family will remember the ritual more than the food. Rituals teach.
External notes
For background on the calendar and the traditional charye order, the Korea Tourism Organization's chuseok page is the most accessible reference, and the National Folk Museum of Korea has English language exhibitions on the harvest rituals.
A note from Eric and Youngsook
Our chuseok is not the chuseok of Youngsook's childhood in Korea. It is also not nothing. It is the version that works for our family in the Bay Area, with grandkids who go to American schools, with extended family scattered across the country, with a Wednesday holiday that does not get a day off.
The version is honest. The food is real. The ritual is small but durable. The kids will remember.
If your family is thinking about how to bring chuseok back, send a note. We are happy to talk through the version that works for your particular family shape.