South Korea has fifteen public holidays a year, and two of them run for three days each. Seollal, the lunar new year, and Chuseok, the autumn harvest festival, each cover the day itself plus the days before and after, and together they account for six of the fifteen. Both follow the lunar calendar and move against the Gregorian year, and both trigger the largest internal migrations South Korea sees, with roughly half the population travelling to ancestral hometowns at the same time.
The Korean Holiday Calendar
| Date | Holiday | Description |
|---|---|---|
| January 1 | New Year's Day (신정) | Low-key compared to Seollal; more Western-style celebrations |
| February 17-19 | Seollal/Lunar New Year (설날) | 3-day holiday; ancestral rites (charye); tteokguk (rice cake soup); sebae (bowing) |
| March 1 | Independence Movement Day (삼일절) | Commemorates the 1919 independence movement against Japanese rule |
| May 1 | Labor Day (근로자의 날) | Not a national holiday but a paid holiday for most workers |
| May 5 | Children's Day (어린이날) | Public holiday; family outings and gifts for children |
| May 24 | Buddha's Birthday (석가탄신일) | Lantern festivals at Buddhist temples; lotus lantern parades |
| June 6 | Memorial Day (현충일) | Honors war dead; moment of silence at 10:00 AM |
| August 15 | Liberation Day (광복절) | Celebrates liberation from Japanese colonial rule in 1945 |
| September 24-26 | Chuseok (추석) | 3-day holiday; Korean Thanksgiving; ancestral rites, songpyeon rice cakes |
| October 3 | National Foundation Day (개천절) | Celebrates the legendary founding of Gojoseon in 2333 BCE |
| October 9 | Hangul Day (한글날) | Celebrates the Korean alphabet created by King Sejong |
| December 25 | Christmas Day (크리스마스) | Public holiday; unusual for an East Asian country |
The Two Three-Day Holidays
Seollal falls on the first day of the first lunar month, usually in late January or February. Chuseok falls on the fifteenth day of the eighth lunar month, in September or early October, on the full moon.
Both are observed for three days: the day before, the day itself, and the day after. That structure exists because the observance requires travel — families gather at the home of the eldest son of the senior line to perform charye, an ancestral rite involving a specific table setting of food.
Chuseok is sometimes called Korean Thanksgiving, which is a rough translation. It marks the harvest, and the characteristic food is songpyeon, half-moon rice cakes steamed over pine needles, traditionally made by the whole family the night before.
The Great Migration
Estimates of travel during the Seollal and Chuseok periods run to 30 million or more journeys over a few days, in a country of 51 million people. The Seoul-to-Busan expressway, normally four hours, can take ten or more.
KTX high-speed rail tickets for the period sell out within minutes of release. The government publishes traffic forecasts, opens hard shoulders as running lanes, and suspends expressway tolls during the main travel days.
The pattern has weakened somewhat as fewer families maintain a rural ancestral home and as younger Koreans increasingly travel abroad or stay home instead. Outbound flight bookings during Chuseok have risen consistently, and the phrase used for it in the Korean press translates roughly as holiday escape.
Two New Year Celebrations
South Korea marks the new year twice. 1 January is a public holiday, and many Koreans travel to the east coast — Jeongdongjin and Homigot are the classic spots — to watch the first sunrise of the year over the sea.
Seollal, weeks later, is the larger occasion. Children perform sebae, a formal deep bow to elders, and receive sebaetdon, new year money, in return. The customary food is tteokguk, a soup of sliced rice cake, and eating a bowl is traditionally said to add a year to your age.
That last point used to be literal. Korea counted age by a system in which a baby was one at birth and everyone gained a year at the lunar new year, so a child born in December could be two years old a few weeks later. The system was abolished for legal and administrative purposes in June 2023 in favour of international age reckoning, ending a peculiarity that had survived every other modernisation.
Substitute Holidays
South Korea introduced a substitute holiday system in 2014, initially covering only Seollal, Chuseok and Children's Day. It was expanded in 2021 to cover the national commemorative holidays and again in 2023 to include Buddha's Birthday and Christmas.
The rule grants a following weekday off when a holiday falls on a weekend, and it made a material difference: a Chuseok falling across a weekend previously cost workers most of the break.
Some holidays are still excluded. New Year's Day and, in most arrangements, holidays already adjacent to a weekend do not generate a substitute, and the details are set by presidential decree rather than by primary legislation, which means they can and do change.
Temporary Holidays
The South Korean government can declare a one-off temporary public holiday by cabinet decision, and it does so with some regularity. Recent examples include a day added to the Chuseok break in 2023 to create a six-day holiday, and days declared around Liberation Day and Children's Day in previous years.
The justification is usually domestic consumption. The Ministry of Economy and Finance publishes estimates of the spending effect, and the decision is generally announced only weeks in advance, which causes some difficulty for businesses.
Election days are also legally public holidays in South Korea, which is unusual among developed democracies and is credited with contributing to the country's high turnout.
The Four National Commemorative Days
South Korea has four gukgyeongil, national celebration days: Samiljeol on 1 March, Constitution Day on 17 July, Liberation Day on 15 August, and National Foundation Day on 3 October.
Samiljeol marks the March First Movement of 1919, when a declaration of independence was read in Seoul and demonstrations spread across the country under Japanese colonial rule. Liberation Day marks the end of that rule in 1945 and is the only holiday shared with North Korea, which observes the same date.
National Foundation Day, Gaecheonjeol, marks the mythical founding of Gojoseon by Dangun in 2333 BCE — literally the day the heavens opened. Constitution Day, marking the 1948 constitution, lost its status as a non-working holiday in 2008 when the five-day working week was introduced and the government reduced the holiday count; campaigns to restore it recur.
Hangul Day
9 October celebrates the promulgation of the Korean alphabet in 1446, and it is one of very few national holidays anywhere devoted to a writing system.
It was removed from the holiday list in 1991, on the same grounds of economic productivity that took Constitution Day, and restored in 2013 after sustained public campaigning. Korea's alphabet is a genuine object of national pride, and the removal was resented.
North Korea observes the equivalent on 15 January, using the date of the alphabet's creation rather than its promulgation.
Buddha's Birthday and Christmas
South Korea is the only country with both Buddha's Birthday and Christmas as public holidays, which reflects a religious profile found nowhere else — roughly 20% Protestant and Catholic combined, 15% Buddhist, and a majority with no religion.
Buddha's Birthday falls on the eighth day of the fourth lunar month, usually in May. Temples hang thousands of paper lanterns, and the Lotus Lantern Festival parade through central Seoul the preceding weekend is inscribed on UNESCO's intangible heritage list.
Christmas has been a public holiday since 1949 and is observed as a couples' occasion more than a family one, closer to how Japan treats it than to Western practice. New Year's Day is the family occasion instead.
Children's Day
5 May is Children's Day, a full public holiday established by the children's rights advocate Bang Jeong-hwan in 1923 and made a holiday in 1975.
Amusement parks, zoos and museums are at their busiest of the year, and it is a substantial commercial occasion. Parents' Day on 8 May, Teachers' Day on 15 May and Coming of Age Day on the third Monday in May are all commemorative days rather than holidays.
May is consequently dense with observances, and the combination of Children's Day, Buddha's Birthday and any adjacent weekend frequently produces the longest spring break of the year.
What Korean Workers Get
South Korea has among the longest working hours in the OECD, though they have fallen substantially — from over 2,500 hours a year in 1990 to around 1,870 by the mid-2020s, still well above the OECD average.
The statutory working week was cut from 68 hours to 52 in stages from 2018, applying first to large companies and then to smaller ones. Proposals to allow up to 69 hours in some weeks were withdrawn in 2023 after strong public opposition, particularly from younger workers.
Statutory paid annual leave is fifteen days after one year, rising by one day every two years to a maximum of twenty-five. Take-up has historically been low for the same cultural reasons as in Japan, which is why the public holiday calendar carries so much of the weight. For related context, see the countries where Korean is spoken and the count of countries in Asia.
