South Koreans have had THREE days OFF from work, on the TWO most celebrated national holidays : Lunar NEW Years AND ThanksGiving, where the former is common in the Orient and latter has a slightly different meaning than the States – geared more towards paying respect to the elders . the 3 days are necessary for families to hurdle-back to their home-town, as most are concentrated around metropolitan SEOUL – including its satellite cities like ilSan (North-West), NoWon (North-East) and BunDang (South) surrounding the Capital – where the second is built on top of existing neighborhood and rest two built from scratch upon farm-land .
more-over a NEW official national holiday system has been in effect from 2014 stating :
- should any THREE holidays of Lunar NEW Years OR ThanksGiving fall on exiting holiday (Sunday): an extra following business day would become a holiday,
- and the same for May 5th Children’s Day, plus it would get another additional day if it falls on a Saturday too .
thus as ThanksGiving falls on a WeekEnd on Saturday, Sunday and Monday : next Tuesday September 29 will be added to its holiday . plus note the following Saturday is another holiday in Foundation Day and Friday after that : Korean Language Day so holidays are plentiful ahead 😉
ofcourse these are National holidays effecting mostly Post Office and Banks, so small business may take less off as it is still recession (for-ever after iMF bail-out), but family gatherings may be more important for them than ever ..
– Korea Expat BLog –
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