New Year in South Korea

          Happy New Year everyone! Now that a new year has brightened, everyone in Korea has become one year older. Because Koreans count the baby's months in the womb as a year, you're already a year old when you're born. Hence, the people born in the same year are all the same age, regardless of their actual birthdays. Of course, their international ages ("American" ages) vary depending on the actual birthdays.

        

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         Every new year, Koreans eat a rice-cake soup, Dduk guk (떡국), which is pictured above. (This is a brief side note - Korean food tend to sound unappetizing based on English descriptions, which is rather annoying.) By eating Dduk guk, you turning a year older becomes official, but it's not the end of the world if you skip out on eating dduk guk. What Koreans also do to celebrate the new year is play a game of yunnori (윷놀이) and wear their hanboks.

        The thing with us Koreans is, we celebrate the new year twice because, well, we have two new years! One is the new year that most of the world, including America, celebrates and the other new year is the lunar new year - based off of the calender that goes by the moon. 

         I don't have a problem with Korean customs for the new year's (why should I?) but this whole thing about counting the baby's months in the womb as a year always gets me wondering. I mean, a baby's in the womb for 10 months, right? I understand that's close to 12 months, which legitimately makes up a year, but 10 months still isn't quite a year and to count as such seems questionable to me. I know that China also uses this system for ages and although it's just one another country, but every time I meet/encounter someone from a different Asian country and they tell me their age, I always get tripped up about whether it's international age or like the Korean age. 

          Although I get technical with all the 10 months versus 12 months thing, growing up, I always liked telling my fellow American friends what my Korean age is. For me, my birthday is later in the year, so at least before my birthday, I always add two years to my American age. And then when my birthday comes that year, then I'm a year older in American age, so I'd just have to add a year to find out my Korean age, do you follow? That was and still is my amusement, telling people what my Korean age is seeing their reactions. 

새해 복 많이 받으세요! ("Receive a lot of blessings this new year" - Korean's version of "Happy New Year".)



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