Seollal · 설날
Lunar New Year, late January or early February. The morning of sebae, the deep New Year bow to the elders. Tteokguk in the bowl, soft pastel hanbok on the body, blessings written in cards.
Korean culture
Korea, at the family table.
Holidays, ceremonies, food rituals, family traditions. The Korea that lives in a Korean American household, written down so the next generation can find it.
Most of Korean culture, in a diaspora life, gets passed down at the dinner table. A grandmother shows the granddaughter how to fold a mandu. A father explains, on the morning of Chuseok, what the songpyeon shapes mean. The teaching is sideways, by demonstration, by repetition, by the year cycling around again.
The journal is where we write some of it down. Not as a textbook, not as a guide for outsiders. As notes a Korean American family takes for itself, so the second generation has something to read when the first generation is no longer there to ask.
The Korean year
When the table changes.
Chuseok · 추석
The autumn harvest festival, mid-September. Three days of family, the songpyeon rice cakes folded by hand, ancestral graves visited, amber silk hanbok for the photograph.
Dol · 돌
A child’s first birthday. The doljabi table set with objects whose choice predicts the path ahead. Saekdong rainbow sleeves on the hanbok. The first photograph the family keeps forever.
Hwangap · 환갑
The sixtieth birthday, the completion of one full Korean zodiac cycle. A ceremonial bow, a meal that runs three hours, the whole family in coordinated hanbok palette.
Paebaek · 폐백
The bow ceremony after a Korean wedding where two families become one. The bride in hwarot, the groom in samogwandae, dates and chestnuts tossed into the bride’s apron for the children to come.
The weekday
Most of culture is not the holiday. It is the soup at breakfast, the shoes left at the door, the elders served first, the kimchi fermenting in the corner of the kitchen. The repetition is the tradition.
The repetition is the tradition.
Read further
The connected pages.
For the garment the culture is dressed in, and the country it descends from.
Read on
From the journal.
Long-form writing on Korean culture, Korean American family life, and the small traditions that hold a household together across generations and continents.