PHOTOS Visiting hometowns despite virus risk

Despite the South Korean government's repeated messages urging citizens not to travel to their hometowns to celebrate Korean Thanksgiving holiday, or Chuseok, on Oct. 1 to minimize the danger of further clusters of COVID-19 infections, some people chose to take the risk and headed to meet their loved ones outside the city. At Seoul Station on Tuesday, travelers hurried not to miss their trains while station officers spared no time in monitoring consistently changing crowds over concerns of coronavirus inside the station. This year's Chuseok has been highlighted as a highly volatile threshold that can lead to another spike in virus cases that have been kept under 100 daily in the past few days. Whether the fears will be realized remains to be seen after this week when many of the 51 million population mix across the country ― which will make tracing patients' movement routes virtually impossible. Korea Times photos by Choi Won-suk