How Koreans came to celebrate the New Year twice

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How Koreans came to celebrate the New Year twice

Published: 31 Dec. 2025, 07:00

MICHAEL LEE
[email protected]

Audio report: written by reporters, read by AI

Representatives of civic society use a large wooden mallet to ring the bell at Bosingak Pavilion in Jongno District, central Seoul, to mark the start of 2025 on Jan. 1. [JOINT PRESS CORPS]

A curious feature of the modern Korean calendar is that it includes two New Year holidays: Jan. 1 and a later three-day break to mark the Lunar New Year.

Today, both are statutory holidays in Korea. But for decades, successive governments insisted that only one New Year truly counted — and it was not the one Koreans had celebrated for centuries.

While Jan. 1, officially known as Sinjeong in Korean, was elevated as the legitimate beginning of the year, the Lunar New Year — known as Seollal or Gujeong, meaning “old New Year” — was denied official holiday status until 40 years ago.

Although authoritarian governments from the 1960s through the 1980s did not ban Seollal outright, they actively discouraged its observance through official messaging.

This was a deliberate choice, rooted in the political, economic and ideological priorities of leaders determined to remake the country — and its people — at speed. It also shaped the distinct ways Koreans celebrate the two New Year holidays.

Hikers watch the first sunrise of 2025 from the slopes of Mount Halla on Jeju Island on Jan. 1. [YONHAP]

Two New Years, different traditions

Celebrations of Jan. 1 are a relatively recent development in Korea, which traditionally relied on lunisolar calendars derived from Chinese models. As a result, how Koreans mark the beginning of a year depends largely on individual taste and is often modern in tone. In Seoul, some people stay up to watch the ringing of the bell at the Bosingak Pavilion at midnight on Jan. 1, while others in mountainous or coastal areas wake early to view the year’s first sunrise from a clear vantage point.

Seollal, by contrast, is a holiday whose rituals date back more than a millennium. People travel long distances to gather with extended family, perform ceremonial bows to elders and honor ancestors with charye, lavish platters of food that they later share with relatives. Because Koreans traditionally believed a person aged on this day, they also eat symbolic foods such as rice cake soup to mark the passage of time.

The contrast between the two holidays did not emerge by accident.

Children at a kindergarten in Michuhol District, Incheon, learn how to bow to their elders on Jan 23, two days before Seollal. [YONHAP]

Restarting the calendar

The distinction between the two New Year holidays dates to 1896, when King Gojong, the penultimate ruler of the Joseon Dynasty (1392-1910), proclaimed the adoption of the Gregorian calendar and Jan. 1 as the official start of the year in a royal edict.

A photo of King Gojong, left, and his son Sunjong that was published in the September 1893 edition of the French magazine Figaro Illustre [SCREEN CAPTURE]

The decree, intended to align the country with Western practices, was widely resisted. Many Koreans continued to regard the first day of the lunisolar calendar — central to the timing of Seollal and other traditional holidays, such as the autumn festival of Chuseok — as the authentic start of the year.

That resistance hardened after Japan colonized Korea in 1910. Japan had adopted the Gregorian calendar during the Meiji Restoration in 1873, and New Year traditions there simply shifted to Jan. 1. But while Japan’s reform was driven by a desire to modernize and emulate Western powers, its promotion of Jan. 1 in occupied Korea was part of a broader effort to erase Korean culture.

Beginning in the 1930s, colonial authorities not only banned ancestral rites during Seollal, but also prohibited the making of rice cakes and the brewing of alcohol around the holiday.

Even after liberation in 1945, official promotion of Jan. 1 as New Year’s Day over Seollal continued. Successive governments dismantled vestiges of Japanese rule but still “systematically supported” the Gregorian start of the year, casting Seollal as “backward,” according to the National Folk Museum of Korea.

An ideological choice

The government’s preference for Jan. 1 reflected the worldview of Korea’s early leaders, who sought to shape the newly independent state according to their own beliefs.

The country’s first president, Syngman Rhee — a devout Protestant and fervent advocate of Western-style modernization — viewed the Lunar New Year with disdain rivaling that of the colonial authorities. As a result, a list of public holidays promulgated by presidential decree in 1949 omitted Seollal but included a break for Jan. 1 to 3, Chuseok and Christmas, despite the fact that only two percent of Koreans were Christian in 1945.

An article published in the Chosun Ilbo on Dec. 29, 1949, denounces observance of Seollal as “a disgrace for a civilized nation.” [NAVER NEWS LIBRARY]

Newspapers captured the mood of the political elite. An article in the Chosun Ilbo on Dec. 29, 1949, denounced observance of Seollal as “a disgrace for a civilized nation.” To curb traditional offerings to ancestors, Rhee’s government ordered butcher shops, rice mills and flour mills to close during the Lunar New Year period. People were encouraged to perform these rites from Jan. 1 to 3 instead, even though this period did not align with Seollal, whose date in the Gregorian calendar varies annually.

The emphasis on Jan. 1 persisted under former President Park Chung Hee, who seized power in a 1961 military coup. An admirer of Japan’s Meiji-era transformation, Park treated the Gregorian New Year — and the eradication of Seollal — as a symbolic pillar of his own modernization drive.

The writer of a front-page photo caption in the Donga Ilbo on Feb. 6, 1962, captured the tension between popular sentiment and official ideology, noting that “even as ‘revolutionary fervor’ demands the elimination of Seollal, we still long for it because, deep in our hearts, we retain an ancient desire for both pomp and rest.”

Park’s government was unmoved. Train service in and out of Seoul was reduced during the Lunar New Year to prevent homebound travel, and companies that granted employees time off for Seollal were subject to fines and other disadvantages. Cinemas were even barred from advertising special “Seollal programs.” A Chosun Ilbo photo caption from Feb. 5, 1962, showed children playing traditional Seollal games, but claimed that the holiday was “for the young ones.”

A front-page photo caption published in the Donga Ilbo on Feb. 6, 1962, shows shops on Euljiro, central Seoul, closed for Seollal. The writer notes that “even as ‘revolutionary fervor’ demands the elimination of Seollal, we still long for it because, deep in our hearts, we retain an ancient desire for both pomp and rest.” [NAVER NEWS LIBRARY]

Economic rationale

Official resistance to recognizing two New Year holidays also reflected a belief that modernization required discipline and uninterrupted productivity. Economic planners feared that a multiday holiday centered on family travel and ancestral rites would disrupt state-led development aimed at boosting output and incomes.

One New Year holiday, they argued, was enough — and Jan. 1 was the one shared by the industrialized, predominantly Western world Korea aspired to join.

The message was reinforced in print. Newspapers, which operated under heavy censorship during military rule, ran editorials criticizing “the custom of celebrating the New Year twice” and urged readers to adopt “rational lifestyles befitting a modern nation.” Koreans were repeatedly reminded that Jan. 1 was the New Year holiday of “advanced countries,” while extended Seollal rituals were framed as economically inefficient relics of agrarian superstitions.

State institutions echoed these views. Schools treated the Lunar New Year as an ordinary day, and principals were instructed to penalize students absent on “unofficial holidays.” Public television and radio largely ignored Seollal, while late December and early January were saturated with New Year programming.

A Chosun Ilbo photo caption from Feb. 5, 1962, shows children playing traditional Seollal games, but claims that the holiday is “for the young ones.” [NAVER NEWS LIBRARY]

Revival

Still, popular attachment to the Lunar New Year persisted.

Given that it was not a public holiday, families held ancestral rites and gatherings before or after work and school hours on Seollal. Travel, if undertaken, was compressed into narrow windows of time.

By the mid-1980s, it was clear the state had failed to eradicate Seollal. A nationwide survey in 1985 found that more than 80 percent of Koreans still celebrated the holiday according to the traditional calendar. Under pressure from workers, many factories had already begun closing for three or four days during the Lunar New Year.

By then, Korea was also no longer the fragile, aid-dependent country of the postwar era, and suppressing Seollal had become another source of popular resentment toward authoritarian rule. As incomes rose and the middle class expanded, claims that the nation could not afford a few extra days off rang increasingly hollow.

Under former President Chun Doo Hwan, the government made a limited concession in 1985, designating Seollal as a single statutory holiday under the anodyne label “Folk Customs Day,” while keeping Jan. 1 as the official New Year’s Day. Full restoration of Seollal as a three-day holiday came only in February 1989 — 93 years after it lost official status under King Gojong, and two years after Chun’s regime gave way to a directly elected government.

A civil servant describes the restoration of Seollal as a three-day holiday as “one of the most rewarding moments” of his time in public service in an article published by the Kyunghyang Shinmun on Feb. 7, 1989. [NAVER NEWS LIBRARY]

Public response was overwhelming. In an article published by the Kyunghyang Shinmun on Feb. 7, 1989, a civil servant recalled being inundated with calls of praise, describing the restoration as “one of the most rewarding moments” of his more than two decades in public service.

The settlement proved durable, though not unchallenged. In 1998, amid the Asian financial crisis, then-President Kim Dae-jung’s administration proposed reducing the length of Seollal to increase working days. Faced with fierce opposition to scaling back the holiday, the government ultimately left it untouched.

Unable to persuade Koreans to abandon Seollal or shift its rituals to Jan. 1, nearly a century of state pressure produced not the triumph of one New Year over another, but a division of meaning.

Today, Koreans observe both holidays — one as a symbolic opening of a new chapter in their lives, and the other as a time to reconnect with their families and the country’s heritage.

BY MICHAEL LEE [[email protected]]