Preparing for Chuseok

You can tell that Chuseok is coming up: there are people going round with strimmers and the grass on the tombs is being cut in preparation.

Chuseok is a major holiday in Korea and takes place on the 15th day of the 8th lunar month, which is September 8th this year. It’s a celebration of the harvest and a time when Koreans visit their ancestral homes. There are words for the annual visit to family tombs (seongmyo) and for removing the weeds (beolcho).

These activities are also a reminder that we’ve been living on the side of this volcano for a year; the same preparations were under way soon after we arrived last summer.