The journey of millions of Koreans to hometowns across the country to celebrate the Lunar New Year holiday continued Saturday amid heavy snowfall and cold snap disrupting traffic on main roads of major cities.
Nearly 350,000 vehicles were estimated to have left the capital, Seoul, Saturday, the first day of the four-day holiday, and major roads are expected to remain jammed through the end of the holiday next week, Yonhap News reported Saturday, citing highway authorities.
The Lunar New Year's Day, called “Seollal” in Korean, falls on Monday.
Koreans traditionally gather in hometowns or ancestral villages during the Lunar New Year holiday to pay tribute to their ancestors. More than 28 million people are expected to travel during this year's holiday period, with up to 79 percent of them choosing to drive.
Meanwhile, North Korea is also marking the traditional holiday amid signs of more people shopping at markets than usual, Radio Free Asia reported Friday.
North Korea stopped celebrating the Lunar New Year holiday in the mid-1960s to “get ride of feudalism and family-centered mentality.” Instead, it designated the birthdays of Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il, as well as the founding of the Workers' Party, as the nation’s largest holidays.
Since the year 2003, however, North Korea resumed celebrating the Lunar New Year holiday after Km Jong-il instructed to that effect, amid thawing relations with the South and as the Stalinist country began to emphasize the same ethnicity with the Southerners.