(Photo above provided by Hankyoreh Shinmun)
In a land where life traditionally follows the rhythms and cycles of nature and her seasons, the start of the new lunar year is a significant time.
On the 15th day of the first lunar month of each year, Koreans celebrate the holiday of Daeboreum. This date marks the first full moon of the lunar year. Similar to Seollal, the first day of the lunar year, Daeboreum is symbolically significant as a new beginning. It is a time to make preparations for the upcoming months and express hopes for a year filled with blessings. This year, the 15th day of the first lunar month falls on Feb 9.
The traditions and customs of this holiday center around the promotion of good health and happiness, as well as wishing for a bountiful harvest in the coming year. The activities and customs of the day all aim to prepare people for the new year — physically and spiritually.
Go Nuts! As with any major Korean holiday, a specific palette of foods accompanies Daeboreum. The primary traditional dish of the holiday is ogokbap: five-grain rice. This special dish combines glutinous rice, soybeans, red beans, broom corn and millet. Sound healthy? It is believed that consuming this dish after a long, arduous winter replenishes a portion of the nutrients that people typically lose over this difficult season.
Another dietary tradition of the holiday is the consumption of bureom — special seasonal nuts that generally include walnuts, chestnuts, pine nuts and peanuts. On this day, people are expected to eat as many nuts as years that they have lived. Eating these hard nuts is said to strengthen teeth and, as an added bonus, to prevent boils all year. If this connection seems a bit odd, it may help to know that boils and bureom share a similar pronunciation — the Korean word for boils is buseureom.
Bureom should be accompanied by gwibalgisul — ear-quickening wine, which is believed to ward off earaches in the upcoming year. Those who drink this wine on Daeboreum will enjoy good hearing, allowing them to hear good news throughout the year.
Selling and Making Heat Daeboreum boasts a variety of unique cultural traditions.
In traditional times, early on Daeboreum before the sunrise, people would visit a friend's home and call his name. If the friend responded without thinking, the visitor would yell, ¡°Buy my heat!¡±, thus charging the friend with absorbing all the heat that the visitor (and more importantly his crops) would have received over the coming summer. However, if instead the vigilant friend cried, ¡°Buy my heat!¡±, the visitor would bear the burden. It is said that this custom, called deowipalgi, came from the desire to promote diligence before the start of the farming season.
Another less socially intrusive custom of the holiday is daribapgi. People of all ages and socio-economic classes, as well as of both sexes — even women normally restricted from going outdoors — participated in this traditional custom. On the evening of Daeboreum, under the bright light of the full moon, everyone came out from their homes to walk back and forth on the bridges as many times as their age to pray for good health throughout the upcoming year.
A more youthful tradition of the holiday is jwibullori. Geared primarily towards young boys in the countryside, this custom protects against evil spirits and diseases in the upcoming year. On the eve of Daeboreum, young boys burn grass and weeds on the banks of dry fields and paddies while the full moon rises in the sky. The boys strive to kindle large fires because a fierce fire is believed to ensure a successful harvest. Practically speaking, these fires kill the eggs of insects in the fields and fertilizes the fields with ashes. In a spiritual sense, this practice is a symbolic preparation for the new year — the removal of all harmful things before the hard work of farming and the harvest.
Join the Celebration For the largest Daeboreum festival in the land, head down to the island of Jeju. The Daeboreum Fire Festival, held Feb 12—14, is held at Saebyeol Oreumin, a horseshoe-shaped volcano crater. The three-day festival includes prayer rituals for a successful harvest, traditional folk games such as straw-rope making and traditional music performances. All events culminate in a massive 82-acre jwibullori in the field atop the volcanic crater.
For more information, call (064) 728-2751 or visit the festival¡¯s website (
www. buri buri.go.kr). Jeju Island is a 45-minute flight from Gimpo Airport in Seoul.
Article contributed by Seoul Selection
