MORNING CALM TALES The stillness of Chuseok past

A photo of the Chuseok full moon published in The Korea Times, Sept. 18, 1986. Korea Times Archive

By the time Chuseok rolled around in 1991, I had been in Korea for almost 10 months — long enough to know my way around the city, long enough to feel more like a Seoulite than an expat fumbling through a foreign capital. I knew which restaurants served the best bibimbap, how to give directions to a taxi driver in Korean and how to haggle at Namdaemun Market without paying the foreigner’s price.

Chuseok traffic, published in The Korea Times Sept. 29, 1993. Korea Times Archive

Seoul in 1991 was not the city people know today. There was no internet, no Starbucks, no smartphones and no digital diversions to fill a holiday weekend. No 24-hour convenience stores. The subway map was thin, with whole districts reachable only by bus or taxi. Gangnam was still finding its feet, while Namdaemun and Dongdaemun markets carried the city’s pulse. Television meant three Korean stations, and AFKN — the U.S. military’s Armed Forces Network — felt less like a novelty than a lifeline. Outside Itaewon, foreigners were rare enough to turn heads. Compared to the glass-and-steel skyline and nonstop pace of present-day Seoul, the city back then felt smaller, slower and more untouched — carrying more traces of an older Korea before the rush of modernization.

Earlier that year, I had experienced the Lunar New Year, when the city also emptied out. At the time, I had only been in Korea for two months, too new to understand its meaning. The silence of February felt eerie — bare branches, bitter wind, streets drained of motion. By September, though, I had settled in. I knew the city’s rhythms and could see how the holiday worked: families traveling long distances, gift sets stacked in stores, shops closing in unison. Chuseok didn’t feel like the country shutting down; it felt like it was opening into something older, rooted in tradition and remembrance.

Although the holiday lasted only three days, I wasn’t about to hunker down in my apartment and wait it out. With most shops and restaurants shuttered, choices were limited: the three Korean TV stations, whatever AFKN happened to broadcast or a VCR if you’d had the foresight to rent tapes before the video stores closed their doors. I didn’t own one. I didn’t want to simply pass the time — I wanted to feel the city in a different key.

In the months since I’d arrived, I had already visited the landmarks of Seoul. I had shuffled through Insa-dong with weekend crowds, queued for the cable car up Mount Nam and threaded my way through palace courtyards thick with tour groups. But Chuseok offered me something else: the chance to retrace those steps in silence, to see what remained when the noise was gone.

Insa-dong, once alive with antique sellers and tea houses, felt almost ceremonial in its quiet. The shuttered doors seemed to guard something sacred, and the few shops that stayed open for wandering tourists only sharpened the stillness. Their faint glow reminded me how rare it was to find a city like Seoul at rest, its pulse slowed enough that the shuffle of leaves along the alleys became the loudest sound.

Climbing Mount Nam the next day, I felt the solitude deepen. The path itself carried a kind of hush, as if even the mountain understood the holiday. From the tower, the city stretched out in every direction, vast but subdued, as if it too were observing the season. I had seen that skyline before, but never like this — unmasked, quiet, pausing long enough to breathe.

The palaces carried the silence differently. At Gyeongbok Palace, the courtyards opened wide, the tiled rooftops sharp against the sky. The emptiness made me notice the small things — the echo of my steps, the sudden call of a crow overhead, the way sunlight lingered on the eaves. At Deoksu Palace, the hush was more intimate. The crunch of gravel beneath my shoes felt amplified, and the play of light across the trees gave the grounds a quiet expectancy, as if holding something in reserve. Without the usual crowds, both places revealed their patience, their long memory. They felt less like tourist sites and more like confidants, willing to share something only if I stood still long enough to listen.

Photo of busy tombs and a quiet market during Chuseok published in The Korea Times, Sept. 12, 1962. Korea Times Archive

On the final day of Chuseok, I took the subway north and hiked up Mount Bukhan. I had walked the same trail before, among weekend throngs of hikers, but this time the mountain belonged to me. The air smelled of pine and earth, cool and thin as the path climbed, and the slopes below still held summer’s deep green, with only the faintest hints of change. From the ridge, the city shimmered in the hazy sunlight, hushed in its holiday rest. Families across the country were gathered around their tables, but here was Seoul, participating in its own way — quiet, watchful, complete.

What I loved most about that Chuseok was not the places themselves but how they felt when the noise fell away. So much of Korea I had first met in motion — subways, markets, crowds — but in the quiet I could finally sense its bones: the patience of its history, the rhythm of its days.

While foreign residents had three idle days to themselves in the vacated capital city, many Koreans went to their hometowns to perform ancestral rituals, as shown in this photo published in The Korea Times, Sept. 25, 1988. Korea Times Archive

For three days, the city rested, not in absence but in a kind of fullness, as if it had drawn a long breath and was holding it. Looking back now, more than three decades later, I can’t help but measure that stillness against the Seoul of today — wired, caffeinated, always connected and never truly quiet.

In 1991, there was space for silence, for walking empty streets and hearing only the scrape of leaves along the pavement. And in that silence, I found not just a different city, but the beginnings of a place for myself within it — a Seoul that could still breathe, and a self still learning how to belong.

Jeffrey Miller is the author of several novels, including "War Remains," a story about the early days of the Korean War, and "No Way Out," a thriller set in Seoul in 1990.