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Chuseok, the Korean version of Thanksgiving Day, started on Thursday, September 12^th. During the traditional holiday, major highways and expressways here in South Korea are typically packed with cars carrying people hoping to spend time with their relatives. Many homes are busy preparing food that will be shared by family members and for ancestral memorial rites. So, how do North Korean people spend Chuseok and what kind of food do they enjoy on the harvest holiday? 

Here is Ahn Young-ja, a North Korean food expert who previously worked as a special chef at the guesthouse under the Ministry of People’s Armed Forces in North Korea. 

North Koreans take just a day off for Chuseok, unlike people in South Korea where the holiday usually lasts for several days. In the North, people prepare food that their deceased ancestors liked while they were alive and pay respects at their gravesites, bringing the food. In addition to their ancestors’ favorite dishes, they also put delicacies like songpyeon(송편) rice cakes and braised meat on the memorial service table. They perform ancestral rites and share the food with their family. 

In North Korea, Chuseok is classified as a traditional holiday. Until the mid-1980s, traditional holidays were regarded as a vestige of the feudal system. But since Chuseok was revived in 1988, North Korean people have celebrated the 15^th day of the eighth month of the lunar calendar as the traditional harvest holiday, just like their South Korean counterparts. 

While South Koreans enjoy the holiday for at least three days, North Koreans have only one day off because socialist anniversaries like the birthday of the North’s founder Kim Il-sung are more important than traditional holidays such as Chuseok or Lunar New Year. In the South, setting the memorial service table involves traditional rules, including those governing the position of meat dishes, fish or fruit. North Koreans, on the other hand, simply prepare food their ancestors were fond of. But it doesn’t mean the simple table lacks sincerity. North Koreans prepare the ritual food pretty early. 

North Korean citizens prepare ingredients for Chuseok, including fish and pork, in advance, and keep them until they use them on the holiday. My mother always said, “Serve your ancestors well, and you will be blessed.” She would begin to prepare the food a month before Chuseok, buying the best-quality fish, glutinous rice and others at the market. On the day of Chuseok, my siblings and relatives would come to my house to relish the food my mother made. 

Not every household in North Korea can get top quality ingredients, as Ms. Ahn’s home used to, but people spare no pain to prepare the ritual food. 

As Chuseok draws closer, a long line of people in front of local mills wait to pound rice into flour, while others head to private markets or jangmadang to purchase various ingredients such as seafood, meat, bean sprouts and radishes. When shopping, most North Korean residents have to walk from place to place, carrying packages, because they don’t have their own vehicles. The hard-earned ingredients are used to make delicious dishes, which are served on the memorial table at Chuseok. 

In the case of fish, for example, plaice or mackerel is dried first and salted. It is then steamed before being served on the table. For pan-fried delicacies, flour, glutinous rice or mung beans are used. We place three pieces of large green onion pancakes in a single plate, piling one on top of the other. The pork is usually boiled and pressed to remove the liquids and sliced thinly, while the tofu can be fried. Each family prepares food in its own way. 

South and North Korea may use different ingredients for the same Chuseok dishes. For instance, South Koreans cook radish soup with beef, while pork is used in the North since beef is rare. North Koreans boil beef and pork that they received as rations from the spring to fall and preserve them in salt. On Chuseok, they are diced and used to make soup. Similarly, beef is often used for grilled meat in the South, but pork is used for the same dish in the North. Meatballs and pan-fried fish fillets using cod or Pollack are popular holiday foods in the South, but it is hard to find them on the North Korean ritual table. Instead, North Koreans clean rare fish such as atka mackerel and plaice and serve them whole on the table. They make pancakes using sorghum and red beans, instead of fish fillet.  Sometimes, they even put six or seven boiled eggs on the table. 

South and North Korea are also different in the way they prepare songpyeon, the traditional half-moon shaped rice cake eaten during the Chuseok holiday season. 

North Korean songpyeon is large, compared to the South Korean one. In the South, the rice cakes are typically stuffed with sesame seeds, but various other ingredients are used as fillings in the North, including boiled beans, red beans or kidney beans, grinded walnuts or stir-fried vegetables. On Chuseok, family members make songpyeon together at home, place them on the memorial service table and share it with each other. 

It is said that North Korean songpyeon is two or three times as big as the South Korean ones. In many cases, beans, red beans and dried radish greens are used as fillings for the rice cakes. In northern mountainous regions, shredded radish, bean sprouts or potatoes can be put inside the rice cakes. North Koreans are said to make a large amount of songpyeon during the holiday. 

It is colder in North Korea than in the South, and food can be safely stored for a relatively long time before it goes bad. That’s why North Korean people make a lot of songpyeon on Chuseok and consume it for a long period of time.  Other than songpyeon, North Koreans also eat flat, patterned rice cakes called jeolpyeon(절편). 

In North Korea, rice cakes are an essential part of traditional holidays. In normal times, many North Koreans ate minor grains because rice was not enough. Chuseok is a great opportunity to make rice cakes with newly-harvested rice and enjoy them to the fullest. 

In the past, it was almost impossible to produce rice in the cold northern part of the Korean Peninsula. Even today, North Korea’s rice production is not very high. So, Chuseok is a rare, happy occasion for local residents to make lots of rice cakes, which they enjoy for a long time. (One such rice cake is called nochi. To make nochi, knead the mixture of powdered glutinous millet and glutinous rice by adding boiling water. Steam the dough, add powdered malt to it for fermentation, make it flat and round, and pan-fry it. As it is fermented, the sweet and chewy rice cake can be stored and eaten throughout the long winter. 

Sweet rice balls coated with chestnuts are another rice cake North Korean people enjoy on Chuseok.)

With the food and rice cakes they prepared, people hold ancestral memorial rites on the morning of Chuseok, pay respects at the graves of their ancestors and share food with their family members. They reminisce about their deceased ancestors and have a wonderful time together. In the afternoon, they play a traditional board game using four wooden sticks, engage in shuttlecock kicking or ride a swing with their relatives and friends. 

There is no doubt that Chuseok is a time for family gatherings and a bountiful feast, and the holiday scene is pretty much the same in both Koreas. On this year’s Chuseok, we hope people on both sides of the border will make a wish for peace and a unified peninsula, beholding the large, bright full moon. 

(Next week, we’ll learn about North Korea’s mass mobilization campaign, described by the North as the speed battle.)