Festive Occasions: The Customs in Korea

By Yoon Seo-seok

Translated by Cho Yoon-jung

(Ewha Womans University Press)

One can expect plenty of food, music and dance at Korea’s traditional “Janchi.” Janchi would be held for a variety of festive occasions in life, including weddings, milestone birthdays and anniversaries.

The Korean term “Janchi” literally means a feast, or a joyous get-together where people share food and exchange best wishes.

For those who are interested in Korea’s traditional form of celebration, apart from the contemporary parties and heavy-drinking culture, scholar Yoon Seo-seok offers an interesting and scholarly overview of Korean “janchi.”

“The history and characteristics of Korean feasts can be inferred from proverbs that are still in use today,” writes scholar Yoon in her book “Festive Occasions: The Customs in Korea.”

“The proverb, ‘Those who enjoyed the meal say that the banquet was magnificent, while those who didn’t say that it was a shabby affair,’ means different people evaluate the same thing differently according to their personal experiences. At the same time, it shows that the main feature of a feast is the food.”

And indeed, Yoon dedicates one of her sub-chapters to Korea’s feast food. According to Yoon, rice cakes (tteok) were the most basic and most prized food for festive occasions in Korea, where agriculture began in the mid-Neolithic Age with the cultivation of grains. Yoon also points out that rice cakes were one of the basic foods used in relief aid throughout the history.

“As many as 250 kinds of rice cakes are mentioned in historical documents,” writes Yoon. “Ingredients such as cereals and beans, nuts, vegetables, flower petals, and fruit juices were mixed into the rice dough or used as a filling in various types of rice cakes.”

A significant amount of Korea’s feast culture evolved around drinking liquor. According to Yoon, members of Goryeo’s (918-1392) royal family consumed good quality liquor every day. It was during the mid-Goryeo Dynasty that Yuan China’s distillation techniques were introduced to the Korean Peninsula for the first time. It eventually led to the development of the first form of soju, Korea’s first distilled liquor which remains popular even today.

In another chapter, “Rites of Passage,” Yoon provides an interesting analysis on different forms of Korean feasts, including birthday feasts, weddings, as well as holiday feasts such as Seollal and Chuseok.

Yoon Seo-seok was born in 1923, and earned her doctor’s degree from ChungAng University in Seoul. She’s been teaching at a number of universities, including Chung-Ang Myongji. She currently serves as the professor emeritus at ChungAng University’s College of Human Ecology.

(dyc@heraldcorp.com)