Why Koreans Bow to Their Elders on New Year's Day — and Get Paid for It
The New Year My Hanbok Stopped Fitting There's a specific kind of childhood memory that only makes sense when you're an adult. Mine involves a hanbok that was slightly too tight across the shoulders, a living room rearranged so that the adults could sit in a row against the wall, and the particular silence that falls in a Korean household just before the bowing starts. It was Seollal (설날) — Korean Lunar New Year — and I was probably seven or eight. My job was simple: bow correctly, say the right words, and receive the envelope. The envelope was the point, obviously. But even then, underneath the mercenary calculation of a child counting how many relatives were in the room, there was something else happening. Something that felt old and serious and mine in a way I couldn't articulate. That feeling is what Seollal is actually about. Not the money — though the money is very welcome — but the act of stopping. Of gathering. Of doing something your grandparents did, and th...
