Lunar New Year’s Day is one of the greatest national folk holidays of the Korean people.
From ancient times, each family cleaned the interior and exterior of their house and made festive dishes for the holiday.
On the evening of the last day of the 12th month in the lunar calendar, they stayed up till late at night for preparations for various things to celebrate the holiday.
Children and old persons spent a good time playing yut (four-stick) game.
The holiday custom includes holding a memorial service, offering lunar New Year greetings, taking festive dishes for the holiday and playing national folk games.
On lunar New Year’s Day, they would put on festive clothes to hold a memorial service for ancestors and offer New Year greetings to seniors in order.
The greetings were given to the seniors of a family, those of that of close relatives, the elderly of the village and teachers.
Friends would exchange congratulatory greetings wishing each other success in work in the new year.
Typical festive foods included various kinds of rice cakes such as glutinous rice cake, steamed rice cake and fancy rice cake, pancake, roast meat, cake made with wheat flour, oil and honey, fried glutinous rice cake, fruit punch, fruits and liquor.
In particular, rice-cake soup was a must indispensable for the day.
As the rice-cake soup represented the festive foods, people said, “How many bowls of rice-cake soup have you had?” when asking children their ages in the old days.
Pheasant was often put into the soup, but if there was no pheasant, chicken was used instead.
The folk games of the day involved yut game, janggi (Korean chess), women’s seesawing, children’s kite flying, sleighing, top spinning and shuttlecock and pinwheel games. The most popular of them was yut game.
The traditional custom of the day is still carried forward while being developed and enriched.
On the day, schoolchildren compete in folk games in different places of Pyongyang, including Kim Il Sung Square, and other areas of the country and theatres, cinemas and other bases for cultural and leisure activities and public catering establishments offer various services, giving pleasure to people.
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