Korean New Years Tradition

On New Years Day, there are many traditional activities that occur within the Lee household.

For lunch, the ladies of our family cook a rice cake soup called 'Dduk Guk'.  The broth is made by boiling a type of beef (I forget what it's called) for several of hours.  Once the broth is good to go, you add the rice cake slices in it until it's soft enough to eat.  While that is cooking, the beef is getting sliced to put back in the soup.  Eggs are added along with chopped green onions.  When the soup is poured into the bowl, you top it with toasted seaweed lavers.

Before or after you eat, our family does a bow to our grandparents and parents which is called 'Saebae'.  This means that the elderly of our family sits on the floor and waits for our bow.  We usually bow to our grandparents and parents along with our cousins, aunts and uncles.  Guys and girls have a different style of bow and we do this twice in a row.  Once we bow, we sit and wish our grandparents great health for the new year and they tell us to do good in school and always love one another because we are family.  While we bow, there is a saying in Korean that states: Happy New Years. "Sae hae bokk man-ee bod uh sae yo".  Saebae is a sign of respect for our elderly that has been a tradition for a while.  We usually get quite a bit of cash in an envelope after we pay our respects!

After all of these festivities we then play a game called 'Yoot Nori'.  It's a game that has a board with 4 different teams.  You have to throw these four wooden sticks in the air and the way it lands on the floor is how many spots you can move.  We usually split up the teams by families and take turns playing. I don't understand the full instructions but I just throw the sticks and hope to get higher points. This is just a glimpse of some Korean Traditional festivities that happen in our family!