For New Year’s Day this year, my family and I celebrated with traditional Korean food. My cultural artifact is a photo of homemade 만두 (mandu/dumplings). We made the dumplings ourselves, and they were a lot of fun to shape. There was pork, tofu, noodles, and vegetables inside a wonton wrapper. We put these dumplings in the 떡만둣국 (tteok mandu guk), which is rice cake soup with dumplings and garnished with eggs and seaweed. The 떡 (tteok) in tteok mandu guk is white, thinly sliced round rice cakes, but there are different varieties of tteok. According to ancient customs, the white tteok symbolizes purity and cleanliness. 국 (guk) is the Korean word for soup. It is traditional to eat tteok mandu guk on New Year’s Day because it is believed to grant people good luck for the upcoming year. While my family doesn’t necessarily believe eating tteok mandu guk causes us to have good luck, we still eat it every New Year’s Day because it is a delicious tradition. In addition to tteok mandu guk, my family and I ate 전 (jeon/a savory pancake) and 갈비 (galbi/short ribs). Of course, we also had to have 김치 (kimchi), or spicy fermented cabbage, which we have with almost every Korean meal. After dinner, we ate 송편 (songpyeon), which is a small rice cake shaped like a half-moon. I believe the ones that my family and I ate were filled with sesame.
After doing some research on the history of tteok mandu guk, I learned that in the 19th century, it was custom to say, “How many bowls of tteokguk have you eaten?” in order to ask a person’s age. In Korean society, the Korean New Year is similar to a birthday for Koreans. Once a person finishes eating their tteokguk, they are one year older. The Korean age reckoning is different than the international age system because babies born in Korea are born at the age of one. Every New Year’s Day, they add one year to their age (rather than on their actual birthday). For example, a baby born in Korea on December 31 is considered two years old on the following day (New Year’s Day), even though they are only two days old. The opposite formula is also fun. I was born in August 1999. In the United States, I am 21 years old, but if I go to Korea, I would be considered 22 years old!
When my family lived closer to our relatives in New Jersey, we used to observe 세배 (sebae) on New Year’s Day. This is a ritual in which children wish their elders a happy new year by bowing deeply and wishing them good fortune for the new year. Each family would go up to the grandparents, bow together, and say “새해 복 많이 받으세요,” (saehae bok mani badeuseyo) or “Please receive a lot of good fortune for the New Year.” In response, my grandparents would give money to us children. When I was younger, I felt awkward doing this since bowing is not common in American culture. However, now that I am older, I appreciate this act of respect and tradition toward my elders.
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