2027 Seollal

Seollal, the Korean Lunar New Year, falls on the first day of the lunar calendar — between late January and mid-February — and is Korea's biggest holiday alongside Chuseok. Families gather in the morning for charye, a memorial rite offering food to ancestors, then younger members perform sebae, a deep bow to their elders, in return for words of blessing and gift money. The signature dish is tteokguk, a soup of sliced rice cakes; eating a bowl is said to add a year to your age, and afternoons are spent on traditional games such as yutnori and kite flying. The day before and after are also public holidays, and a substitute holiday is added when the three-day break overlaps a weekend. Expressways jam and train tickets sell out, so book transport about a month ahead. This countdown ticks to midnight Korea Standard Time on Seollal, using the Korea Astronomy and Space Science Institute's lunar calendar, which can differ from China's by a day in some years.