Feb. 18, 2025 Tuesday  
Rodong Sinmun
Lunar New Year’s Day, Folk Holiday

Culture 2025.1.29.


From olden times, our people splendidly greet the lunar New Year’s Day as a folk holiday.

On the lunar New Years’ eve our people prepare for greeting the holiday until late at night.

In our country, the eastern country of good manners, our people offer the lunar New Year’s greeting to the ancestors. This event is called "Charye", a memorial service. Every family takes rice dumpling soup on the lunar New Year’s Day in the memorial service.

They say that "Every bowl of rice dumpling soup means a year to your age." So, our people used to ask each other’s age with the bowls of rice dumpling soup they had taken.

Typical foods for the holiday are glutinous rice-cake, steamed rice-cake and other rice-cakes, pancake, roast meat, fried cake made from wheat-flour, oil and honey, fruit punch, fermented fish, etc.

On the holiday our people also play different folk games such as Yut-game, see-saw, kite-flying, top-spinning and shuttlecock game.

To greet lunar New Year’s Day was registered as a national intangible heritage and it has been inherited and developed.

Rodong Sinmun