Time has brought changes to Korean charye table, but bountiful offerings to ancestors still are mainly in practice during the Chuseok or the Korean lunar Thanksgiving holidays. The average cost of the Korean charye table this year will stand at 303,002 won ($227), according to the Korea Agro-Fisheries & Food Trade Corporation. (Photo by Korea Agro-Fisheries & Food Trade Corporation)

The way Koreans spend Chuseok – their Thanksgiving equivalent – has changed dramatically over time.

Chuseok, which falls on the 15th day of the 8th lunar month, is a celebration of harvests and abundance and is one of the most important holidays here. The Chuseok holiday will run from September 28 to October 1 this year, but the government also designated October 2 as a temporary holiday, extending it to a six-day break to spur domestic tourism and spending.

In bygone days, Koreans would sit in cars or buses for multiple hours in severe traffic jams on annual pilgrimages to their hometowns to attend family gatherings. Once extended families were united, they made songpyeon (half-moon-shaped rice cakes) together, ate toranguk (taro soup), shared gifts and visited the graves of their ancestors to pay respects. Some women also performed the ganggangsullae, holding each other’s hands while singing and dancing in a circle. This ancient Korean dance was registered with UNESCO as intangible cultural heritage in 2009.

Preparing for charye (ancestral rites) was the biggest and probably most stressful part of Chuseok. Koreans, especially married women, had to cook all day to prepare foods like jeon (fritters) and namul (edible greens or leafy vegetables) for their ancestors. The Seoul Agro-Fisheries & Food Corporation recently announced after surveying the price of 36 products at 25 sites that the cost of the groceries needed to prepare Chuseok ritual tables would average 237,381 won at traditional local markets and 280,581 won at large discount stores this year.

The excessive labor required during the holiday would often lead to “Chuseok stress” and subsequent family conflicts. The number of divorces routinely spikes after Chuseok and Seollal, the big family-centered Lunar New Year holiday, according to Statistics Korea.

Seoulites flock to a traditional market in Seoul’s Mangwon-dong to prepare for the Chuseok holiday that falls on September 28 - October 1 this year. (Photo by Yonhap)

To tackle this problem, the Sungkyunkwan Commission for Correcting Rituals, a group that aims to preserve Confucian culture and rituals, announced simplified guidelines for setting up ritual tables. Actually, however, a lot of families have already deviated from the norms by laying out non-traditional offerings of easy-to-prepare crowd pleasers like pizza or fried chicken if other relatives agree.

A family visits ancestral tombs in Bupyeong-gu, Incheon, to perform rituals on September 10, more than two weeks ahead of the observed Chuseok day. (Photo by Yonhap)

For many, Chuseok has become a time to relax. Rather than stress out in traffic en route to an extended stay with relatives, they use the typical three to five days off to do things they normally would not have time for. This trend was likely accelerated by the social distancing required during the COVID-19 pandemic that severely restricted in-person meetings.

Traveling tops the wish list, as evidenced by a recent survey conducted by Yeogi Eottae, a booking platform for lodging and transportation.

According to its survey conducted from September 1 to 3, more than 70 percent of the 1,000 people asked said they plan to go on a trip during the upcoming Chuseok holiday. Among those traveling, over 88 percent are planning a domestic trip while approximately 11 percent are considering traveling abroad.

According to survey platform Tillion Pro, over 60 percent of 2,527 respondents said in 2021 that they supported the trend toward deciding what to do individually rather than following the tradition of family gatherings. Less than 40 percent said they were sad to see the traditional culture fading away.