Korean reading — TOPIK II · Traditions

Last Saturday, Minho walked along Suwon Hwaseong with his friends.

Suwon Hwaseong is a fortress built during King Jeongjo's reign in the Joseon era, and it is also a registered World Heritage site.

At first, he thought it would be easy since all he had to do was walk along the wall.

But the wall stretched a long way over the hills, so it was much harder than he expected.

When he climbed to a high point, he could see the whole city at a glance.

He couldn't help but marvel that walls over two hundred years old were still standing strong.

A sign also explained that new machines, such as a lifting crane, were used to build the fortress.

Minho decided to come back at night next time to see the lit-up walls.

On the morning of Seollal, my family puts on hanbok and bows to our elders.

The elders who receive the bows offer words of blessing and give the children New Year's money.

This year, for the first time, I also prepared envelopes of New Year's money for my nieces and nephews.

But because I was in a hurry, I meant to put in a ten-thousand-won bill and ended up putting in a fifty-thousand-won bill.

My six-year-old nephew opened the envelope, his eyes went wide, and he ran to his mom.

Only when my older sister brought the envelope over, laughing, did I realize my mistake.

In the end, we decided to put the money in my nephew's bank account, and everyone had a good laugh.

Thanks to my mistake, I think this Seollal will stay in my memory for a long time.

One day my friend Maria, who works in Korea, asked, “Last year Chuseok was in September, so why is it in October this year?”

I explained that Chuseok falls on the fifteenth day of the eighth lunar month, so its date changes every year.

The lunar calendar is based on the waxing and waning of the moon.

So if you convert the fifteenth day of the eighth lunar month to the solar calendar, it usually falls in September or early October.

Seollal is also the first day of the first lunar month, so its solar date changes every year too.

Maria laughed and said she finally understood why lunar dates are printed in small type on calendars.

Since then, she says she checks the holiday dates first whenever she buys a new calendar.

While explaining, I too felt again how closely our holidays are tied to the moon.

Haeun decided to go to Gyeongbokgung Palace with her cousin, who was visiting from abroad.

Her cousin said she wanted to try on a hanbok, so they stopped by a hanbok rental shop near the palace.

But the price for a two-hour rental was higher than she expected, so Haeun hesitated for a moment.

Then a shop employee told her that people wearing hanbok can enter the old palaces for free.

Telling herself it was like paying the admission fee, Haeun rented hanbok for herself and her cousin.

Walking through the palace in hanbok, she felt as if she had become someone from long ago.

Foreign tourists asked to take photos with them, so the two of them posed many times with smiles.

Looking at the photos after she got home, she didn't regret the rental fee at all.

Every year in early winter, my grandmother's yard fills up with napa cabbages.

That's because it's kimjang day, when the neighbors gather to make the kimchi they'll eat all winter.

When I was little, I thought kimjang was just a day for making a lot of kimchi.

But now I see that, rather than just making food, kimjang is closer to an event for sharing warmth with neighbors.

Some salt the cabbages, others mix in the seasoning, and conversation blossoms all the while.

When the work is done, we wrap boiled pork in the freshly made kimchi and thank each other for the hard work.

We also share the kimchi with elderly neighbors who live alone.

This kimjang culture is also inscribed on UNESCO's list of Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity.

For Hangul Day, Junseo joined a guided program at the National Hangeul Museum.

The guide began by saying, “As you all know, Hangul is the script created by King Sejong the Great.”

Hangul was first introduced to the world under the name Hunminjeongeum.

Hunminjeongeum means “the correct sounds for teaching the people,” and it was reportedly made for common people who couldn't read.

What fascinated Junseo most was the explanation that the consonants were modeled on the shapes of the mouth and tongue when speaking.

The exhibition halls displayed a variety of materials written in Hangul, such as old books and letters.

At the end, he also tried writing his own name in Hangul with a brush.

Junseo learned for the first time that the letters he uses every day carry such deep meaning.

Jeongwol Daeboreum is the day of the first full moon of the lunar new year.

On the morning of this day, people crack nuts such as walnuts and peanuts with their teeth and wish for good health all year.

This year Daeboreum fell on a weekday, so everyone in Doyun's family started the day in a rush.

Doyun wondered if they would just skip the nut-cracking this year.

But just as he was about to step out the front door, his grandmother pressed two walnuts into his hand.

She said that cracking nuts keeps skin problems away all year and makes your teeth strong.

When Doyun bit down on a walnut with a loud crack, his grandmother smiled contentedly.

That evening, the family ate five-grain rice together and watched the round full moon.

A few days before Chuseok, Sua was going to buy songpyeon from a rice cake shop.

Then her mother said, “This year, instead of buying songpyeon, let's make them ourselves as a family.”

Songpyeon are rice cakes made by filling rice-flour dough with sesame seeds or beans and shaping it into a half-moon.

It was Sua's first time, and her songpyeon kept splitting at the sides, so they looked a mess.

Her grandmother, watching nearby, told her the old saying that if you make pretty songpyeon, you'll have a pretty daughter.

Sua laughed and tried again, and little by little the half-moon shape began to appear.

When they steamed the songpyeon on a bed of pine needles, the scent of pine filled the whole house.

They looked rougher than the ones from the rice cake shop, but they tasted better because the whole family made them together.

In Korea, three days in the hottest part of midsummer are called Chobok, Jungbok, and Malbok.

On these boknal days, there's a custom of beating the heat by eating hot restorative dishes like samgyetang.

This year on Chobok, Taemin went to a famous samgyetang restaurant with his coworkers.

That day the sun was so hot it actually stung, yet there was a long line in front of the restaurant.

Taemin couldn't understand why people eat hot food on such a hot day.

Then a senior colleague told him the expression “iyeol chiyeol,” which means fighting heat with heat.

After finishing a whole bowl of samgyetang while sweating, he actually felt lighter.

Taemin decided to come back to this restaurant with his coworkers on the next boknal too.

On a friend's recommendation, Yerin went to see a pansori performance for the first time.

Pansori is a performance in which a single singer tells a long story in song to the rhythm of a drummer.

When the performance began, the singer played many characters alone, holding only a fan.

At first, Yerin found it a little hard to follow because there were many old-fashioned words.

But when the audience called out encouragements like “Eolssigu!” and “Jota!” here and there, the atmosphere quickly heated up.

That day's performance was Simcheongga, the story of the devoted daughter Simcheong, who sacrifices herself for her blind father.

When the performance ended, Yerin found herself wiping away tears without realizing it.

Yerin felt she understood why pansori was inscribed as UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity.

These days, Hyunwoo is learning talchum, the mask dance, at his neighborhood cultural center.

Talchum is a traditional performance in which dancers wear masks and tell a story by dancing to music.

It's said that people long ago used talchum to satirize the faults of the aristocrats and release their frustrations.

But when he actually tried it, dancing in a mask turned out to be really quite hard.

The mask made it hard to see ahead, and on top of that, there were many big arm-swinging movements.

When the first class ended, Hyunwoo was drenched in sweat from head to toe.

Still, after about a month, his body began to move naturally to the rhythm.

Hyunwoo is practicing with the goal of performing on stage at the year-end recital.

As Chuseok approaches, many families go to their ancestors' graves to cut the grass, which is called beolcho.

Until now, I'd always thought beolcho was something my father and uncles simply took care of.

But this year my father hurt his back, so I ended up going with my uncle in his place.

Grandfather's grave was in a spot where you had to climb a mountain path for quite a while even after getting out of the car.

The grass that had grown all summer was as tall as I was, and mosquitoes kept swarming at me.

Only after sweating through it myself did I realize how hard my father had worked every year.

When I bowed with my uncle in front of the tidied grave, even my heart felt refreshed.

Next year, I want to come with my father and share this work with him.

On the day before Seollal, Eunji's house is filled with the smell of cooking oil from the morning.

That's because frying the jeon for the ancestral memorial table is Eunji and her mother's job.

The two of them prepared mountains of meat patties, zucchini jeon, and pollock jeon.

But the problem was her younger cousins, who wouldn't leave the kitchen.

Every single time Eunji fried a piece of jeon, the cousins snatched it up and ate it.

Even after frying for a long time, the plate hardly filled up.

Only after her mother made a separate plate for the cousins did the jeon finally start to pile up.

Eunji says it was tiring, but seeing her cousins enjoy the food put her in a holiday mood.

On a trip to Jeju last summer, I met some haenyeo coming out of the sea after their dive.

Haenyeo are women who dive into the sea without oxygen tanks to gather seafood such as abalone and turban shells.

I heard that one of them, despite being over seventy, still goes into the sea for several hours a day.

Holding your breath and diving into the deep sea again and again isn't easy even for young people.

When haenyeo surface, they let out the breath they've held with a whistling sound, which is called sumbisori.

I also heard that they follow rules to protect the sea, such as not taking young seafood.

This culture of the Jeju haenyeo is inscribed as UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity.

Listening to the stories of the haenyeo, who have lived alongside the sea, I felt deep respect.

Sohee went to see the Royal Guard Changing Ceremony held in front of Gwanghwamun Gate at Gyeongbokgung Palace.

The ceremony recreates the ritual in which the soldiers who guarded the palace gates changed shifts during the Joseon era.

Despite the fact that a bitterly cold wind had been blowing since morning that day, many people had gathered in the square.

Tourists in thick coats held up their cameras, waiting for the ceremony to begin.

Before long, to the sound of a big drum, the gatekeeper and his soldiers appeared in colorful uniforms.

Even though the cold wind whipped at their robes, the soldiers moved with precision, never breaking form.

Watching them, Sohee could feel the solemn atmosphere of the palace in olden times.

After the ceremony, she also took a souvenir photo with the people dressed as guards.

On the jar terrace at the elderly woman's house next door, big and small crocks stand in rows.

Every year in the first lunar month, she makes soybean paste and soy sauce herself from fermented soybean blocks.

She soaks the blocks in salt water, then takes them out; the blocks become soybean paste and the remaining liquid becomes soy sauce.

I asked her how she had managed such labor-intensive work for decades.

She said modestly that she simply does it the way her mother taught her, and that's all.

Still, her jang has such a deep flavor that all the neighbors want to get a little of it.

This year, I also helped her by washing the soybean blocks and wiping the crocks.

I hope that someday I'll be able to make jang myself, just like her.

One weekend in late autumn, Minjae took his parents to Bulguksa Temple in Gyeongju.

Bulguksa is a temple built in the Silla period, and together with the nearby Seokguram Grotto it is a registered World Heritage site.

Once inside the temple, they saw two ancient pagodas, Dabotap and Seokgatap, standing side by side.

Dabotap was ornate, while Seokgatap was simple yet beautifully balanced.

On top of that, the temple was surrounded by beautifully colored autumn leaves, so the scenery was beyond words.

His parents happily talked about memories of coming here on their school trip.

Minjae was fascinated to read on a sign that a very old Buddhist scripture had been found inside Seokgatap.

He decided that next time he would definitely go up to Seokguram in time for the sunrise.

Last month, Chaewon attended a close friend's traditional wedding.

The groom wore a traditional official's hat and robe, and the bride wore a ceremonial robe and a small crown, and they stood in the courtyard.

Before the wedding ceremony itself, there was a step in which the groom presented a wooden goose to the bride's family.

The host explained that because geese are said to stay with one mate for life, the goose stands for the couple's promise.

Next, the bride and groom bowed to each other and shared a drink from cups made by splitting one gourd in two.

There were many steps the guests had never seen, so they listened carefully to the host's explanations.

It took longer than a Western-style wedding, but the meaning in each step really struck her.

Chaewon found herself thinking that if she gets married someday, she'd like to have a traditional wedding too.

Ganggangsullae is a folk game in which women hold hands and circle around singing under the Chuseok full moon.

It has been handed down mainly in coastal villages of South Jeolla Province, and it is also inscribed as UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity.

This Chuseok, I took part in a ganggangsullae event in the seaside village where my maternal grandmother lives.

One person sang the lead line, and everyone else answered with the refrain, “Ganggangsullae.”

At first we circled slowly, but as the song sped up, we all went around almost running, until we were out of breath.

But these days there are fewer young people in the village, so they say it's not easy to keep the event going.

Still, my grandmother said that as long as the villagers gather and sing, ganggangsullae will not disappear.

Next Chuseok, I want to bring my friends and form the circle together.

During the Seollal holidays, Jiho went with his dad to a kite-flying event held at a folk museum.

The shield kite, Korea's best-known traditional kite, has a round hole in the middle, so it holds up well even in strong wind.

Long ago, on the first full moon of the year, people would write words on a kite to send away bad luck, fly it, and then cut the string.

Jiho wrote “Stay healthy this year too” on the shield kite he made himself.

As the kite rose high, Jiho was so focused on looking up at it that he didn't see the stone at his feet.

In the end, Jiho tripped over the stone and fell, but luckily he never let go of the kite string.

Brushing off Jiho's knees, his dad laughed and said that when flying a kite you have to watch not only the sky but also your feet.

That day, Jiho's kite flew the highest at the event, and he even won a small prize.