The Lunar Calendar & the New Year's Day Traditions
I had said last week that I was going to put up a step-by-step guide as to how to order delivery food in Korea with an app. I had completely forgotten that this past Wednesday was the New Year’s Day in lunar calendar and the entire week was a holiday in Korea. Most businesses were closed and I couldn’t do much with regard to ordering delivery for my parents. I thought maybe this is the perfect opportunity to talk about the lunar calendar system itself and some of the Korean New Year’s Day traditions.
This ancient (scholars disagree where and when this system originated but at least 8,000 years old) system of keeping calendric months and years is based on the waxing and the waning of the moon, which takes 29.5 days to complete the full cycle.
29.5306 days to be exact. So, in lunar calendar (we call it 음력, eum-ryok), we have 6 months that have 30 days and the other 6 months with 29 days. Which leaves us with 354 days in one year. Which, in turn, is 11.24 days short of 365.24 days it takes for the Earth to circle around the Sun. That’s problematic.
A German Jesuit and astronomer named Adam Schall von Bell, a well-known figure in Chinese history, spent most of his life in China as a Catholic missionary and scientific advisor to the newly established Ching (or Qing) dynasty in the early 17th century. He almost single-handedly helped Ching develop what’s now known as “Lunisolar calendar” that inserts days and sometimes even a full month to make up for the discrepancies.
And it just so happened that the first son of King Injo (인조) of Joseon, the Crown Prince So-hyeon (소현세자),1 was being held hostage in China at the time. Since their first meeting in 1644, the two men reportedly spent a lot of time together whenever they could, discussing western philosophy and science2 although they were separated by quite a distance. Upon So-hyeon’s eventual return to Joseon, the current Korean system of lunar (= lunisolar) calendar was instituted.
To make up for that 11+ days difference, what happens to the official lunar calendar is that an entire month of 30 days called “윤달 (yoon-dal)” is inserted 7 times every 19 years, almost once every 3 years—there are years that have 13 months. This is precisely why the New Year’s Day in lunar calendar falls on a different day in the solar Gregorian calendar that we use everyday (we call that 양력, yang-ryok).
For example, the New Year’s Day…
in 2020 was January 25,
in 2021 was February 12,
in 2022 was February 1,
in 2023 was January 22,
in 2024 was February 10,
and this year was January 29.
generally speaking, the lunar calendar days come 25~45 days after the western calendar days.
It’s confusing. It’s not something you can calculate off the top of your head. But it is quite useful, I’m told, for fishermen and anglers because they can tell when the tides will be high/low and when the fish will bite.
Also, all the shamanistic fortunetelling stuff that I’ve been writing about is 100% based off of this lunar calendar dates.
To Koreans, the Lunar New Year’s Day is much, much bigger than the Gregorian January 1 New Year’s Day. So much so that the government designates the day before and the day after the Lunar New Year’s Day national holidays as well. Because this year’s New Year’s Day was a Wednesday (thus Tuesday and Thursday were holidays also), the government declared the Monday to be a holiday also. The country had the whole week off—9 days off if you played your cards right.
The single biggest tradition would be what’s called 세배 (seh-bae, 歲拜). English language Chinese history books often speak of “kowtowing” which Google AI explains…
The gesture itself is very similar but Korean seh-bae is anything but a “sign of submission or obsequious deference.” It is a form of paying respects to your elders and wishing them “good fortunes and health” for the new year. Most people say,
새해 복 많이 받으세요 (We wish for good fortunes headed your way this year.)
Then the elders would in turn give what’s called a 덕담 (deok-dahm, “words of well-wishes”), by saying things like,
You do the same and we hope you achieve everything you set out for. (And for single people who are in their late 20s and beyond, add the inescapable “when are you going to get married?” I tell ya, some things are universal.)
My parents would always say to my kids when they were little,
Be healthy, do well in schools.
If you’re a Korean, we can ALL relate to this, right? 건강하고 공부 열심히 해라.
The just as big (and more enjoyable for the person who’s doing the seh-bae) part of this tradition is that along with the deok-dam, the elders return the favor by gifting the younger with seh-bae money (세뱃돈).
When I was growing up in Geochang (my hometown) where there were more than 200 relatives living within 30 minutes of each other on foot, I used to go around and seh-bae until my knees would get bruised. But I did it gladly, however, for I earned the whole year’s worth of allowance money on one day, although it wasn’t all that much.
Another part of the New Year’s Day traditions is the 떡국 (tteok-guk, soup with rice cakes). It is a must-have and you’re officially 1 year older after eating a bowl of this. Kids would always joke around, I ate two bowls this year, so I’m two years older now.
** notes:
Korean age system used to be (the government is trying to change it more toward the western style) a lot different. As soon as you’re born, you’re considered 1 year old because of the 9 months you’ve spent in your mother’s womb. And on the New Year’s Day, you gain another year in age automatically. So, if you were born on December 31, you would be considered as a 2-year old when you’re barely 2 days old!
This is a modern tradition and there is no way getting around it, but you can expect to spend ungodly number of hours on the expressways in Korea trying to get to your respective hometowns—thus the holidays the day before and the day after.
This starts about 2 days before the New Year’s Day and becomes the biggest news item for a couple of days—how many hours it will take from Seoul to Busan. With regular traffic, it should take about 5 hours, but it’s been known to take more than 10.
It must have been in 1995 when I was living in Seoul, I was stuck in this traffic for 12 hours!! to get to Geochang, normally a 4 to 4.5 hour drive, to see my grandparents for the holidays. Now with a new expressway that opened up, about 3.5 hours.
And of course, same type of traffic hell coming back up to Seoul.
Oh boy… is there a story to tell between King Injo and his son So-hyeon. One of the greatest remaining mysteries in all of Korean history. King Injo is widely considered to be the most cowardly leader the country has ever had (although the current president Yoon is challenging that moniker).
Quite well-established that the Crown Prince So-hyeon was very open to western thoughts and scientific knowledge.