Ordinary 'Seollal' for special people

By Kim Da-ye

Foreign housewives married to Korean men are having a Lunar New Year holiday that doesn’t appear to be too different from the one of Korean housewives.

A Filipino volunteer at a multiracial family support center in Ansan, Gyeonggi Province, is planning to spend the four-day holiday at her in-laws.

“It’s a lot of hard work. My mother-in-law isn’t well nowadays. When she was well, we would make mandu (Korean dumpling) in abundance,” she said.

Because her husband is the eldest son, she will be in charge of cooking and preparation for the traditional commemoration of ancestors.

Her home country does not celebrate the Lunar New Year. She said that in the Philippines, she and her family would attend a mass at midnight on Dec. 31 and gather on New Year’s Day to “have fun.”

The Filipina who has lived in Korea since 1999 is fluent not just in Korean but also in cooking complicated Korean cuisine required for the memorial service, which she learned from scratch from her mother-in-law.

Despite the heavy workload given to her as the wife of the eldest son, she has learned to embrace the positive side of one of Korea’s most celebrated holidays.

Pham Thi Quynh Hoa, a manager at the Seoul Metropolitan Government, has similar plans but will do less cooking. Pham, who hails from Vietnam, will also spend the holiday at her in-laws. Her mother-in-law and sisters will cook while she takes care of the cleaning.

Because Vietnam also celebrates the Lunar New Year, she misses her home during this festive season. She stays in Korea because the Seollal holiday tends to be short and flights become too expensive.

While Pham said traditions observed on Seollal including memorial services and visits to cemeteries are good for the children as cultural heritage to be passed down, she stressed that Koreans should try to enjoy Seollal more and not place stress on others. Not only does Vietnam celebrate the holiday for nine days, but also the people there try to relax.

“In Vietnam, we would tell an unmarried woman, ‘You will marry a very nice person this year.’ Both Koreans and Vietnamese wish them the best but say it in different ways. I hope people have a good time during Seollal,” Pham said.

In the case of Le Thi Anh Thu, also from the Vietnamese community, her parents-in-law have passed away, so she plans to spend the holiday just with her family. She, in fact, has been busy with her job and community work. Le may not have a big family gathering, but will spend time with members of the community.

The kind of the burden felt by foreign wives of Korean men is apparently much less for non-Korean husbands, who aren’t obliged to cook and prepare for memorial services.

Jason, a 30-year-old Englishman who lives in Korea with his wife and son, decided to take a short trip to Busan with his wife’s family this year. During the festive season, he will dine with his wife’s family and visit some relatives. He said that all the relatives of his wife live in and near Seoul, so he doesn’t need to be part of the “mass exodus.”

“We don’t follow all kinds of formalities,” said Jason. “We always have nice food together but we don’t spend the whole time together.”

But this doesn’t mean that Seollal is purely a time for him to relax. While he finds both Seollal and Chuseok good opportunities for families to come together, meeting large groups of people can be an exhausting experience for a foreigner.

“It can be quite laboring, the whole process of new people,” he said. “It can be also tiring when everyone speaks Korean.”