By Andrew Salmon
"What?!?" you exclaim. "What could possibly be wrong with a days-long, family-centric, traditional holiday?" The Chuseok holiday is over for another year ― and thank God for that. I can barely wait to get back to work…
Well actually ― quite a lot. Allow me to don my curmudgeon's hat and brief you fully.
Chuseok is when every man, his cousin and their dog travel home to visit old Mom and Dad. If you are blessed, Mom and Dad live somewhere civilized and accessible ― in, say, a luxury Gangnam apartment. But if they reside in your ancestral village deep in rural Middleofnowhere-Namdo ― good luck.
Cue every man, his cousin and their dog piling into vehicles. Korea boasts an excellent network of expressways, but no road net in the world can cope with tens of millions of peeps all surging onto it at once. Result? The most hideous traffic conditions known to humankind.
Eventually, at Zero Dark Thirty, you arrive. The little ancestral home, alas, is not designed for the massive influx which has descended upon it. You are shoved into a back room with sundry brothers, sisters, cousins, broods and a dog or two, all jammed on top of one another for the duration.
Day one dawns. Yawning, you queue up to use the bathroom, which also was not designed for this abundance of users. Eventually it is your turn. Having showered and shaved, it is time to dress. You dust off the old hanbok for its annual airing. Following a 15-minute struggle with buttons, broaches and strings, you are ready for action.
After wading through a churned up mountain path ― your hanbok's yellow trousers are drenched in mud ― and paying respects before the ancestral grave, everyone squeezes into the living room.
You wisely filled up at the ATM, because on this day of days, you face significant financial outlay: Everyone under your age is genuflecting and demanding their due (i.e., at least 10,000 won). Miserably, you fork it out. Your wallet, formerly plump and brimming with crisp, fresh cabbage, looks suddenly anorexic.
Still, once this extortion is over, you can fill your face. The dining table is groaning with a heaving cornucopia of grub: There is galbi jjim, galbi tang, the inevitable japchae noodles, and much, much more. For conversation, there is the endlessly enjoyable sport of asking the older girls why they are not married yet.
At the back of your mind is one answer to this question ― because your dearly beloved is nowhere to be seen. She and your brother's wives are slaving away in the kitchen under the stern and unforgiving instruction of Mom.
Thankfully, the booze is flowing. Naturally, you feel the urge to relieve yourself. Doh! The bathroom plumbing has given up the ghost. You sneak out to the backyard cabbage patch.
After struggling with your hanbok's fiddly trouser strings, you are surreptitiously watering the garden when you glance through the kitchen window. The wives are grim-facedly scrubbing the dishes. One charm of Korean cuisine is its plethora of side dishes. One downside is the endless washing up required.
After an afternoon nap, you wake with just a mild hangover. Time for dinner! To nobody's surprise, dinner is leftover lunch. In fact, over the course of this "holiday" you find yourself constantly revisiting Day one's dishes, warmed over endlessly. You desperately want to escape for a chimaek but Chuseok is, of course, a holiday. The village's only bar is closed.
Eventually, it's time to head home. Good luck speaking to your wife during the long, long traffic-jam. She will either be snoring away, sleeping the sleep of utter exhaustion, or in a sour-faced, evil mood brought upon by her annual bout of kitchen slavery.
So there you have it. For the patriarch, Chuseok is tremendous fun: It is the one time of the year when he gets to lord it over everyone like a Joseon tyrant. For most others ― especially the women ― it is a trial.
Anyway, it's over for another year! So, back to work until Christmas ―and don't get me started on that hideously commercialized, "religious" holiday…
Andrew Salmon (andrewcsalmon@yahoo.co.uk) is a Seoul-based reporter and author.
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Well actually ― quite a lot. Allow me to don my curmudgeon's hat and brief you fully.
Chuseok is when every man, his cousin and their dog travel home to visit old Mom and Dad. If you are blessed, Mom and Dad live somewhere civilized and accessible ― in, say, a luxury Gangnam apartment. But if they reside in your ancestral village deep in rural Middleofnowhere-Namdo ― good luck.
Cue every man, his cousin and their dog piling into vehicles. Korea boasts an excellent network of expressways, but no road net in the world can cope with tens of millions of peeps all surging onto it at once. Result? The most hideous traffic conditions known to humankind.
Eventually, at Zero Dark Thirty, you arrive. The little ancestral home, alas, is not designed for the massive influx which has descended upon it. You are shoved into a back room with sundry brothers, sisters, cousins, broods and a dog or two, all jammed on top of one another for the duration.
Day one dawns. Yawning, you queue up to use the bathroom, which also was not designed for this abundance of users. Eventually it is your turn. Having showered and shaved, it is time to dress. You dust off the old hanbok for its annual airing. Following a 15-minute struggle with buttons, broaches and strings, you are ready for action.
After wading through a churned up mountain path ― your hanbok's yellow trousers are drenched in mud ― and paying respects before the ancestral grave, everyone squeezes into the living room.
You wisely filled up at the ATM, because on this day of days, you face significant financial outlay: Everyone under your age is genuflecting and demanding their due (i.e., at least 10,000 won). Miserably, you fork it out. Your wallet, formerly plump and brimming with crisp, fresh cabbage, looks suddenly anorexic.
Still, once this extortion is over, you can fill your face. The dining table is groaning with a heaving cornucopia of grub: There is galbi jjim, galbi tang, the inevitable japchae noodles, and much, much more. For conversation, there is the endlessly enjoyable sport of asking the older girls why they are not married yet.
At the back of your mind is one answer to this question ― because your dearly beloved is nowhere to be seen. She and your brother's wives are slaving away in the kitchen under the stern and unforgiving instruction of Mom.
Thankfully, the booze is flowing. Naturally, you feel the urge to relieve yourself. Doh! The bathroom plumbing has given up the ghost. You sneak out to the backyard cabbage patch.
After struggling with your hanbok's fiddly trouser strings, you are surreptitiously watering the garden when you glance through the kitchen window. The wives are grim-facedly scrubbing the dishes. One charm of Korean cuisine is its plethora of side dishes. One downside is the endless washing up required.
After an afternoon nap, you wake with just a mild hangover. Time for dinner! To nobody's surprise, dinner is leftover lunch. In fact, over the course of this "holiday" you find yourself constantly revisiting Day one's dishes, warmed over endlessly. You desperately want to escape for a chimaek but Chuseok is, of course, a holiday. The village's only bar is closed.
Eventually, it's time to head home. Good luck speaking to your wife during the long, long traffic-jam. She will either be snoring away, sleeping the sleep of utter exhaustion, or in a sour-faced, evil mood brought upon by her annual bout of kitchen slavery.
So there you have it. For the patriarch, Chuseok is tremendous fun: It is the one time of the year when he gets to lord it over everyone like a Joseon tyrant. For most others ― especially the women ― it is a trial.
Anyway, it's over for another year! So, back to work until Christmas ―and don't get me started on that hideously commercialized, "religious" holiday…
Andrew Salmon (andrewcsalmon@yahoo.co.uk) is a Seoul-based reporter and author.
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