South Korea
South Korea's national calendar is dominated by two cluster periods around the lunar calendar: Seollal (Lunar New Year) and Chuseok (autumn harvest festival). Each runs 3-5 days with substitute holiday rules; together they account for most of the year's mass-migration traffic on highways and KTX rail.
National public holidays
- New Year's Day - January 1
- Seollal - Lunar New Year, 3 days
- Independence Movement Day - March 1
- Children's Day - May 5
- Buddha's Birthday - 8 April by lunar calendar
- Memorial Day - June 6
- Liberation Day - August 15
- Chuseok - 3 days around 15 - 8 by lunar
- National Foundation Day - October 3
- Hangul Day - October 9
- Christmas Day - December 25
The two cluster periods
The Korean calendar is unusual among major national calendars in that two specific cluster periods - Seollal and Chuseok - are far heavier than the individually observed Gregorian holidays. Each cluster generates the largest single domestic-migration traffic event of the year, with the Korea Expressway Corporation estimating 6-8 million vehicles on expressways on each eve. The KTX high-speed rail, and cross-country flights, are similarly congested. Outside these two clusters, the calendar observes a lighter set of individual days: Children's Day, Memorial Day, Liberation Day, and the others listed above.
Family migration and ancestral hometowns
The Korean emphasis on returning to ancestral hometowns for Seollal and Chuseok is rooted in the Confucian patrilineal structure of historical Korean society: the eldest son traditionally inherits the family estate, and the family's ancestor tablets, ancestral graves, and charye (ancestor veneration) altars are accordingly maintained at the ancestral home. Modern Korean migration patterns, the concentration of jobs in Seoul and Busan, and the persistence of patrilineal-rooted family expectations combine to produce the largest annual domestic-migration events in Korea during the two clusters.
Sebae and New Year's money
The younger generation performs sebae (deep bows) to elders on Seollal and Chuseok, and elders respond with sebaedon (cash gifts, most commonly a crisp 10,000-won note). The customs of returning home, performing the bow, and receiving gift money together form the core of Korean intergenerational exchange. The transfers are typically smaller than Chinese New Year hongbao amounts, but more widespread and continuous.
Holiday food
Tteokguk (rice cake soup) is the signature Seollal dish, with the cultural belief that eating a bowl of tteokguk advances a person one year in age. Songpyeon (half-moon rice cakes filled with sesame, honey, chestnuts, or red bean paste) is the signature Chuseok food. Other cluster-specific foods include yakwa and hangwa for Seollal, and yaksik (sweet rice with dates and walnuts) for Chuseok's charye ancestral rites.
Contested holidays
The 2024 impeachment crisis extended Memorial Day observances in Seoul into broader debates about holiday observance, but the underlying conflict predates 2024. South Korea's Memorial Day (Jeongeonil, June 6) marks the Korean War and earlier memorial-of-the-dead occasions; the day's observance has periodically been controversial, particularly around its overlap with President Rhee's 1950s memorial framework. No Korean holiday has attracted the kind of major reframing debate that's surrounded the Australian Australia Day calendar.
Where the calendar differs from the US and UK
The Korean calendar has 15 national public holidays (counting Seollal and Chuseok as 3 each) compared to the US's 11 federal + state, and the UK's 8 bank + regional. The Korean calendar's structure is distinguished by (a) lunar-anchored clusters, (b) shorter overall federal holiday count than the US but heavier in observance weight, and (c) absence of a major indigenous-historical reframing comparable to Columbus Day / Indigenous Peoples Day in the US. Korean substitution rules are more aggressive than the US's: nearly every Korean national holiday that falls on a weekend receives an additional substitute day off.
Major holiday briefs on this page
Each of the holidays discussed on this regional overview has a full standalone brief covering its origins, observance practices, and modern controversy: