as noted on early January Post here : a new holiday system officially went into effect from this year where following business day/s will become holiday/s should existing national holiday/s fall into a WeekEnd .
- original Korean ThanksGiving Holiday is composed of three days, adding a day each before and after actual ThanksGiving Day . these additional days are necessary considering the fact that family members need to travel back to their home-town, as whole family gathers during ThanksGiving to pay respects to passed ancestors with a grand meal table, then to devour it among participating relatives . furthest South-Korean cities can be reached in about five hours via highway, but traffic gets conjested to a halt during Lunar New Years and ThanksGiving it will take three times that .
- one previous day falls in a Sunday this year in 2014, thus an additional Wednesday becomes a new holiday also – Totalling a lumpuous FIVE-day holiday from Saturday .
note this will effect government institutions such as bank and Post Office, plus large conglomerate companies with strong labour union like the automobile industry . thus you should ask your independent language schools whether they will respect this new system .
Conglomerate-operated Shopping Mall is another story, as incredible as it may sound in such a culture with long tradition : competition is driving them to open as long as possible – more-so since they’ve had to adjust their hours from complaints from smaller merchants in the vicinity when located in a super-large multi-complex facility .
- Super-Marts like eMart, HomePlus, Lotte and MegaMart (whose some branches in central or tourist areas have been open 24 hours) will also only close on ThanksGiving Day only . ofcourse branches in remote locations may close more .
- Department Stores like Shinsegae, HyunDai and Lotte will close a single day on ThanksGiving Day Monday September 8th only in 2014, but some branches in central areas would not at all due to swarming Chinese tourists especially into those that contain Duty Free Shops (note one of the two oldest Department Stores in Korea : Midopa has been bought by late-comer Lotte in 2011).
- most ShinSeGae Department Store branches will close two days Sunday and Monday .
- aside from KINTEX and CheungCheong Branches which close Sunday & Monday, most HyunDai Department Store branches will close two days Monday & Tuesday .
- OutLet Malls will close mostly on Monday only .
- plus most Lotte OutLet branches will close also on Sunday, aside from AnYang, Centum City and SangIn which will be closed Monday & Tuesday (this is same for Lotte Department Stores below).
- Mario OutLet at GaSan Digital Complex will close Monday only .
– Korea Expat BLog eating, full and passsed-out –
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