Chuseok (Korean Harvest Festival) Countdown

Chuseok is Korea's three-day autumn harvest thanksgiving, held on the 15th day of the eighth lunar month. Families reunite in their hometowns, honour their ancestors and give thanks for the harvest beneath the full autumn moon.

History

Chuseok reaches back to the agrarian societies of the ancient Korean peninsula, where the fifteenth day of the eighth lunar month marked the moment when summer's labour ripened into the year's first full harvest. Historical chronicles preserve a well-known account from the kingdom of Silla, set in the first century during the reign of King Yuri, describing a month-long weaving contest between two teams of women; on the appointed day the outcome was announced and the losing side hosted a feast of food, song and dance known as Gabae. From that early gathering many trace the seasonal thanksgiving that would be called Chuseok. Through the Goryeo (918–1392) and Joseon (1392–1897) periods the observance matured into a household festival centred on ancestral memory and the sharing of new grain. Families performed charye, a rite offering freshly harvested rice and fruit to earlier generations, and visited family gravesites to clear the grass in a practice called beolcho. Folk customs took root alongside these rites — circle dances, wrestling and games that turned the harvest-moon night into a communal celebration. The affectionate old name Hangawi, meaning the great middle of autumn, dates from this long era. Chuseok kept its footing as Korean society industrialised in the twentieth century. As people moved to the cities for work, the holiday became the occasion for a vast annual homecoming, when families journey back to their hometowns along crowded roads and railways. It was recognised as a public holiday and, in 1989, extended to three days so that families could travel and gather. Today it is celebrated by Korean communities around the world and remains, with Seollal, one of the two great holidays of the Korean year.

Meaning

For those who keep it, Chuseok is above all a season of gratitude and reunion. The heart of the holiday is the return home, when relatives scattered through the year gather under one roof to share the harvest, shape songpyeon by hand and pass family stories between the generations. Preparing and eating the new grain together is an act of thanks for a year of plenty and of care for the people one belongs to. Chuseok is also a time of remembrance. Through the charye rite and the tending of ancestral graves, families honour the generations who came before them, weaving memory into the celebration. Above it all rises the full harvest moon, whose round, complete shape has long symbolised abundance and the closeness of family. To watch it together on Chuseok evening is to feel that the circle of one's people is, for a night, whole.