Korean New Year, commonly known as 설날(Seol-nal) is the first day of the lunar calendar. Along with Chuseok it is one of the most important of the traditional Korean holidays. It consists of a period of celebrations, starting on New Year’s Day. Korean people also celebrate solar New Year’s Day on January 1 each year, following the Gregorian Calendar. The Korean New Year holiday lasts three days, and is considered a more important holiday than the solar New Year’s Day.

Korean New Year is typically a family holiday. The three-day holiday is used by many to return to their hometowns to visit their parents and other relatives where they perform an ancestral ritual. Many Koreans dress up in colorful traditional Korean clothing called hanbok. But nowadays, small families tend to become less formal and wear other formal clothing instead of hanbok.

떡국(Tteokguk) (i.e. soup with sliced rice cakes) is a traditional Korean food that is customarily eaten for the New Year. According to Korean age reckoning, the Korean New Year is similar to a birthday for Koreans, and eating Tteokguk is part of the birthday celebration. Once you finish eating your Tteokguk, you are one year older.

Sebae is a traditionally observed activity on Seollal, and is filial-piety-oriented. Children wish their elders (grandparents, aunts and uncles, parents) a happy new year by performing one deep traditional bow (rites with more than one bow involved are usually for the deceased) and the words새해 복 많이 받으세요(saehae bok mani badeuseyo) which translates to Receive many New Year blessings, or more loosely, “Have a blessed New Year.” Parents typically reward this gesture by giving their children new year’s money, or “pocket money,” (usually in the form of crisp paper money) and offering words of wisdom, 덕담 (deokdam).