A oégugin Chusok

If you have no family in Korea to whose home you must travel, I guess this is as good a way to spend your Chusok holiday as any:



I actually quite enjoyed that, but I happen to have a blonde-girl-dancing-in-pink-unicorn-costume fetish.

My all-time favorite this-major-holiday-isn't-for-us video, however, is "Christmastime for the Jews" from Saturday Night Live:

Insert Chusok post here

Chusok traffic in 2007. Some of these people still haven't made it home.

About the only thing going on here that's going on back in Korea is the full moon. No foliage turning colors, no massive traffic jams, no taking off from school. Still, to keep things in a Chusoky mood, here are some Chusok-themed posts from the past:

• Do you know Chusok?

• The ghosts of Chusok past

• Happy Korean Thanksgiving Chusok, everyone!

Girls' Generation wishes you a  happy Chusok.

Happy Korean Thanksgiving Chusok, everyone!

It's Chusok (추석/秋夕; ch'usŏk, aka Chuseok, though please someone tell me how seok really sounds like "suck"?), and that can me only one thing: Time to recycle my "Do you know Chusok?" post. Here it is.

There's a bit of controversy about what to call this holiday in English. My vote is "Chusok," though that might require some explanation that puts you right back into the whole "what do you call it?" debate. To put it bluntly, some people think that "Korean Thanksgiving" is demeaning, misleading, and peeving.

Native-speaking Koreans might be forgiven for matching the two together: the Korean word for American Thanksgiving is ch'usu kamsajŏl (추수감사절), the ch'usu part of which ties it in with autumn harvest festivals, like the ch'u in ch'usŏk. And while South Koreans don't traditionally give thanks to God, necessarily, they do give thanks and pay respect to their ancestors. And of course, everyone around the country drives, flies, or trains long distances to go see family.

All in all, it's a pretty good case.

Of course, the activities are different once they get there. While some traditional American families have the women folk doing most of the cooking and cleaning, just like in South Korea, the non-cooks among them (read: menfolk in traditional Korea or America) do entirely different activities. In America they watch football, while in Korea they play go-stop. Or they sit around and indirectly see who is better off than the other, job-wise and financées-wise. Well, that might be the same as in America.

Anyhoo, enjoy your turkey or your songp'yŏn or kimchi or whatever you're having. Drive safe, don't drink and drive, pull over if you're tired, and all that. See you all on the other side.

Do you know Chusok? 추석 아시죠?

This is related to a conversation from Space Nakji's site, in which Anglophones not of 100% Korean ethnicity and Korean birth ponder why so many Korean-Koreans think so many "foreigners" don't know squat about even basic Korean things or participate in the most basic of Korean cultural experiences. In essence, the "Do you know Chusok?" line of questioning.

I'm going to come slightly to the defense of some Korean-Koreans who end up making these inane statements by stating that in some cases, it is a matter of a verbatim translation (known in the trade as an L1 transfer, as in a direct transfer from the L1, or 'first language').

As the lead-up to an important question about scheduling, one person I know asked me a few weeks ago, in English, "Do you know Chusok?"

"Of course I know Chusok," I answered. "I've lived here how many years? I even teach my American students about it!"

It was a pretty inane question coming from someone who not only knew that I had lived here a very long time, had celebrated Chusok, and even had mentioned to her that my birthday was around Chusok.

But then I asked her, for shits and giggles, to tell me what she had meant to say in Korean.

She was a little confused about what I wanted her to say, but I explained briefly, and so she began, "추석 아시죠?..."

So, "Do you know Chusok," should have been... would have been (if coming from a native English speaker), "You know the Chusok holiday coming up, well, I was wondering if you would be able to..."

In other words, completely different from how I interpreted it. We native English speakers do this all the time: "You know the McDonald's up the street? There was a shooting there because someone wanted an Egg McMuffin after 10:30 and they wouldn't sell him one."

When I start to say, "You know the McDonald's up the street?" the person listening knows that that rhetorical question is just a starter for more pertinent information. The person doesn't jump down my throat and say, "Do you think I'm an idiot? I've lived in this neighborhood for twenty-five years! Of course I know the McDonald's up the street! I go there all the time! You and I went there last week and had an Egg McMuffin, even! Do you think I'm senile?! Well, do you?!"

The more degrees away from native-speaking ability, the less this rhetorical starter can seem like a rhetorical starter. With a pause after the starter, bolstered by unfortunate non-native word choice, the rhetorical starter can easily seem like the showcase sentence.

Do you know Chusok?