What Is Seollal? Korean Lunar New Year Explained

 Written by a Korean-born writer who spent three decades in the airline industry, sharing what growing up in Korea actually looks like.

Introduction: No One Talks in the Car on the Way Back

It's the last evening of the Seollal holiday, and a thirty-two-year-old woman is driving back to Seoul from her hometown. Her face is tense behind the wheel.

Her foreign boyfriend, sitting in the passenger seat, asks carefully, "Did something happen back there?" She's quiet for a moment before answering. "My uncle brought up marriage again."

Her boyfriend doesn't quite understand. Isn't a holiday supposed to be a time when family gathers and everyone has a good time? So why does this woman, who was smiling all through the holiday, look this exhausted by the final evening?

In short: Seollal looks like a warm family holiday on the surface, but underneath sit real tensions — unequal kitchen labor, blunt personal questions from relatives, and quiet family pressure — layered against genuine reasons people keep coming back for it anyway.

On the surface, Seollal looks like a warm, harmonious holiday built around bowing to elders, sharing a bowl of rice cake soup, and colorful traditional clothing. But underneath that surface sit several scenes that make no sense at all to a foreign observer.

Why do people wrap canned meat gift sets with the kind of care usually reserved for luxury items? Why does an entire day disappear into cooking holiday food? Why do relatives ask deeply personal questions without a second thought?

This piece unlocks what sits underneath the surface of Seollal, the real reasons and the real emotions, not just the customs themselves.

Mystery One: Why Do People Wrap Spam So Carefully as a Gift?

The Spam and Tuna Sets That Fill Department Store Entrances

As Seollal approaches, the entrances of Korean department stores and large supermarkets fill with gift sets combining canned Spam, canned tuna, and cooking oil, displayed with red ribbons as if they were luxury items. To a foreign observer, it can be genuinely confusing why canned meat and cooking oil are sold with this level of formal packaging.

These gift sets make up a significant share of department store sales every holiday season, and the custom is deeply entrenched.

A Symbol Rooted in Postwar Scarcity

The background usually cited for this custom traces back to the severe food shortages following the Korean War (1950–1953). At the time, canned processed meat like Spam, which made its way into Korea through U.S. military bases, was considered a rare and valuable food.

Giving it as a gift likely became a way of expressing genuine care for the recipient. Spam is no longer rare today, but the underlying sentiment, carefully wrapping something practical that anyone can use, has stayed intact.

Canned tuna and cooking oil are bundled in for a similar reason. They're household staples every family uses, which makes them a safe gift even when the giver doesn't know the recipient's specific tastes.

Why It Doesn't Need to Be Extravagant

For many Korean people, a gift like this tends to feel more sincere than an expensive luxury item, not less. An expensive gift can create a sense of obligation, while a Spam set communicates something more practical: "I thought about what your family's table needs."

It's a common sight during holiday visits to see an older relative say, "You didn't need to bring anything like this," while their face clearly shows they're pleased.

The Desire to Splurge, Just Once a Year

That said, this doesn't mean every Korean person always prefers modest gifts. Even people who are perfectly comfortable with practical gifts most of the time often make an exception for Seollal.

A fair number want to buy a premium hanwoo (Korean beef) gift set for their parents, even if it strains their budget. A well-known department store hanwoo gift box can easily run $150 to $400, several times the price of a comparable box of USDA Prime steaks in the United States.

This isn't really a contradiction of the practical gift culture described above. It's closer to two expressions of the same feeling. Day to day, care is expressed through household staples, but once a year, some people want to put "I wanted to do this much for you" into a cut of expensive beef.

Chuseok's gift culture runs on a different logic entirely, rooted in abundance rather than scarcity — worth reading side by side with this one.

Mystery Two: Why Does Holiday Food Take So Much Effort?

Why an Entire Day Disappears Into Frying Pancakes

The Seollal food that probably leaves the strongest impression on a foreign observer is jeon (전), savory pancakes made by coating ingredients in flour and egg wash before pan-frying them. A typical holiday spread includes five or six different kinds at once.

Add in japchae, glass noodles stir-fried with vegetables, and galbijjim, short ribs braised for hours. Preparing holiday food becomes a long stretch of labor, starting a day or two in advance and continuing right up through the morning of the holiday itself.

The reasoning behind such a wide variety of dishes ties back to a traditional belief that the memorial table offered to ancestors should look abundant and varied. Many families still follow customs around color balance on the table, red meat, white vegetable dishes, and yellow pancakes arranged deliberately.

Why This Is One of the Days Daughters-in-Law Dread Most

Seollal, alongside Chuseok and the days set aside for ancestral memorial rites (jesa), is routinely named as one of the holidays Korean daughters-in-law dread visiting their husband's family for the most. Attitudes are shifting, and this pattern is far from universal today.

But in a large number of households, the labor split still looks familiar. The women stand at the stove frying jeon and preparing side dishes for hours, while the men gather in another room drinking, playing cards, or watching television.

A daughter-in-law can spend most of the day on her feet in a kitchen that isn't her own, only stepping out to serve food and clear dishes, while her husband and his brothers relax next door. This imbalance is one of the most commonly cited reasons Korean women describe feeling anxious or resentful in the days leading up to a holiday visit.

Between Devotion and Burden

For many Korean people, particularly the mothers and daughters-in-law who actually do this work, the labor tends to feel like devotion and a genuine burden at the same time. The stress and fatigue that come from this burden are widely referred to in Korean society as myeongjeol jeunghugun, or "holiday syndrome."

As social awareness of this unequal labor has grown, more families have started buying pre-made jeon instead of frying it themselves, or simplifying the memorial table altogether. A growing number of households now go a step further, ordering much of the holiday spread ready-made from a local restaurant or a pre-packaged meal kit.

What used to be an unquestioned multi-day cooking marathon is, for a rising number of families, becoming something closer to reheating and plating.

Mystery Three: Why Do Relatives Ask Such Painful Questions So Casually?

The Questions That Repeat Every Year

One of the scenes that leaves foreign observers most uncomfortable during Seollal is the blunt questions older relatives direct at unmarried nieces or cousins who haven't found a job yet. "When are you getting married?" "Did you find a job yet?" "When are you having kids?"

From a Western sense of privacy, these questions read as clearly rude. Yet the relatives asking them often have no sense that they're being rude at all.

A Sense That This Isn't Just an Individual's Business

Behind the repetition of these questions sits a broader assumption within traditional Korean family culture: major life events like marriage and employment aren't purely private matters. They're things the whole family is expected to take an interest in.

Marriage in Korea was traditionally understood not as a union between two individuals, but as a union between two families. In that context, asking a niece or grandchild about marriage or employment tends to feel, to the person asking, less like an invasion of privacy and more like an expression of care.

Why the Holiday Still Feels Dreadful

The perspective of the younger generation receiving these questions is different, though. For someone who hears the same question year after year, it tends to feel less like affection and more like pressure.

In recent years, a noticeable number of young Korean people have started to dread going back to their hometown for the holiday, or keep their visits brief before leaving early. The gap between the "care" the older generation intends and the "pressure" the younger generation actually feels has become part of what defines the Seollal experience today.

Even So, Why Do People Keep Doing This?

By this point, a foreign reader is probably asking an obvious question. People lose sleep pushing through hometown traffic. They work their hands raw frying pancakes.

They sit through invasive questions about marriage and employment. So why haven't Koreans given up on this holiday? There isn't a single, clean answer. Based on what I've observed and heard over the years, here are the explanations that seem most likely.

Habit and a Yearly Confirmation of Identity

The first and simplest explanation is the sheer power of habit. Because this has been repeated every year since childhood, not doing it can feel strange and unsettling in itself.

At the same time, repeating these rituals functions as a yearly confirmation of belonging. Bowing together, eating the same food, and sitting around the same table confirm, without anyone needing to say it out loud, that everyone present shares the same roots.

The Weight of "If I Don't, It Ends With Me"

A heavier emotion tends to weigh on the eldest son or daughter, or the parent who has taken charge of the memorial rites for years: the sense that "if I stop doing this, this tradition ends completely with my generation."

Many Korean parents tell their own children, "You don't have to do this anymore," while continuing the ritual themselves without fail. That sense, that they're the one currently carrying the tradition, appears to be one of the forces that keeps this going even when it's exhausting.

This same generational sense of duty shows up in why so many Korean adults still live at home until marriage.

The One Time a Year the Whole Family Is in the Same Room

There's also a practical reason. As Korea has urbanized and families have grown smaller, siblings and cousins are far more likely than before to be scattered across different cities.

Setting aside the exhausting preparation, these few short days are often the only real chance family members get to see each other's faces, share a meal, and watch the children grow up. The reason the holiday is hard, and the reason people can't give it up, seem to come from the very same root: family.

A Feeling Deeper Than Any of the Above

I don't think the three reasons above fully explain everything going on. Somewhere deep down, many Korean people seem to carry a vague sense that this, even if it's difficult, shouldn't be allowed to disappear.

It doesn't feel like a logical habit or a sense of duty. It feels like something deeper, almost as if this feeling were etched into Korean identity itself. To be clear, this isn't a claim that anything about it is literally genetic — it simply means this feeling, repeated across generations, now feels less like something learned and more like something carried from birth.

These reasons aren't mutually exclusive, and for most Korean people, they exist as some blend of all of them. Families are increasingly finding their own way to reduce the burden while protecting the part that actually brings them joy.

Bowing, Cash, and a Board Game Called Yut

Sebae and Sebaetdon

After the memorial rites are finished, children and younger family members perform a formal bow called sebae to grandparents, parents, and other elders. A child in hanbok kneels on the floor, raises both hands to forehead height, and bows deeply.

In return, the elder offers a blessing and hands over an envelope containing sebaetdon, New Year's money.

I still remember how thrilled I felt as a child receiving just a single thousand-won bill as sebaetdon. Now that I'm the one handing envelopes to my own grandchildren, watching them bow while I prepare the envelope has become one of the most rewarding moments of my entire year.

A Few Other Familiar Scenes

The rest of the morning after sebae fills up with a few other familiar rituals. Yutnori, a board game played by throwing four wooden sticks, has simple enough rules that the whole family can play together on the living room floor.

Television channels run special holiday programming, including "Seollal special movies" and variety show specials. Some families also visit their ancestors' graves on the day itself or the day after, a visit called seongmyo.

Common Misunderstandings

• ❌ Myth: Koreans go home for Seollal because they genuinely enjoy every part of it.
• ⭕ Reality: Many go despite real exhaustion and dread around specific parts, like kitchen labor or invasive questions — the pull is more about family bonds than pure enjoyment.
• ❌ Myth: The Spam and canned goods gift sets are seen as a cheap or lazy gift.
• ⭕ Reality: For most Koreans, these practical gifts read as more sincere than expensive ones, since they signal thoughtfulness about what a household actually needs.
• ❌ Myth: Relatives asking about marriage or jobs are being deliberately rude or nosy.
• ⭕ Reality: Many older relatives genuinely intend the questions as care, even though younger relatives increasingly experience them as pressure.

What Koreans Actually Say

The lines below aren't direct quotes from real interviews — they're representative of the kind of language Koreans commonly use in these situations.

Foreigner: "Why does everyone dread going home if they still go every year?" Korean: "Honestly, if I don't go, my parents will be hurt for months." (thinking: it's easier to just go and get through it.)

Foreigner: "Doesn't it bother you when relatives ask about marriage?" Korean: "It used to, a lot. Now I just have a joke answer ready."

Foreigner: "Why does your family still fry all that food from scratch?" Korean: "We don't, actually — we order half of it now. Nobody talks about it, we just do it."

Practical Advice for Foreign Readers

If You're Actually Invited to a Family Gathering

Some fortunate foreign readers will get a direct invitation to a Korean friend's family gathering during Seollal. The most important thing is not to be too afraid of making mistakes.

If you get the order of a bow wrong, Korean families are generally forgiving toward a foreign guest experiencing this for the first time. Making a genuine, if imperfect, effort to join in leaves a far better impression than hanging back out of awkwardness.

If there's drinking involved, having a moderate amount without getting drunk is generally understood and accepted. If you genuinely can't drink, it's best to say so honestly rather than hide it.

If You're a Foreign Woman Marrying Into a Korean Family

A different situation applies to foreign women marrying into a Korean family and spending their first Seollal as a daughter-in-law. The bar most in-laws actually set is far lower than it might seem.

Very few Korean parents-in-law genuinely expect a foreign daughter-in-law to know how to fry jeon correctly. What leaves a real impression is simply showing up to the kitchen and asking what needs to be done, rather than staying in the living room while the work happens elsewhere.

If You Need to Bring a Gift

A practical item tends to leave a better impression than something flashy. A fruit gift set or a modest health food item is a safe choice, and a gift in the range of a few tens of thousands of Korean won is generally seen as perfectly appropriate.

Planning Travel During the Holiday

Foreign readers planning to travel within Korea during Seollal should book train tickets and flights at least a month in advance. KTX trains and domestic flights frequently sell out the moment reservations open.

Learning One Phrase in Advance

Foreign readers who meet Korean people around Seollal can get a warm reaction just from learning one phrase in advance: "Saehae bok mani badeuseyo", "Get lots of good fortune this new year." Perfect pronunciation isn't necessary.