Chuseok still is a headache for couples

The conversation was one of the most jarring moments since her wedding in 2020, recalled Seong, a 35-year-old office worker, who said her exchange last week with her husband, five years older, left her perplexed at first, then indignant as she slowly digested what her husband had alluded to.

“He said we should call his parents and ask for their understanding because we would not be staying at their home on Chuseok day, Tuesday, even though we’d be there from Saturday to Monday,” Seong said of the five-day Chuseok break ending Wednesday. The couple failed to book the return train tickets from Daegu to Seoul that would have allowed them to stay with the husband’s parents on Tuesday.

"Two nights and three days are enough already,” Seong added.

The case of Seong, who insisted on using her surname only, sheds light on the patriarchal tradition where the husband’s parents are given priority. Every year, Korean couples grapple with the stress of visiting parents and the gendered responsibilities that go with it. But now, some couples and families are considering forgoing Chuseok traditions altogether.

Shifting perceptions

What vexed Seong more was how her husband, a millennial just like her, cast her as unreasonable for not seeing a reason to ask for his parents’ understanding. He believed their absence should be acknowledged as it caused an unwarranted change to his family’s Chuseok tradition -- something the husband says needs to be carried on because “it is a well-established norm that has been around for a long time.”

“The better part of millennials and Generation Z wouldn’t agree with that,” Seong said, referring to the population generally defined as those born between 1980 and 2012. Seong argued the younger population identifies itself as less bound by Chuseok traditions, especially when it comes to holding “charye” or ancestral rites conducted on Lunar New Year’s Day and Chuseok.

Seong isn’t entirely wrong.

In a 2022 report by the Ministry of Gender Equality and Family, roughly 60 percent of people aged 20 to 39 approved of ending charye. The figure has since stayed at similar levels.

Women, especially, decry the burden of preparing for charye.

Married in late 2017, a banker surnamed Kim, who observed charye every Chuseok until 2022 at his parents’ home in Gumi, North Gyeongsang Province, still vividly recalls his same-age 36-year-old wife shedding tears on the way back to Seoul, where the couple lives.

“She felt alone in having to deal with the peer pressure that forced her to commit herself to hourslong charye preparations,” Kim said. “She had expected me to intervene but I just couldn’t -- at least not in the way she had hoped,” Kim added, saying he could not just swoop in when family elders all took for granted having the daughter-in-law organize the family ancestral rites.

For his family, Chuseok charye was discontinued last year when Kim’s grandmother passed away and the family consensus on doing away with big charye gatherings quickly gained momentum. Kim’s father could not resist the changing tide. The father and the couple now eat out on Chuseok -- joined by no other elders or relatives than Kim’s brother.

Accelerating change

While perceptions of Chuseok traditions are shifting fast, the reality isn’t.

Sociology professor Kwon Soo-hyun of the Jinju-based Gyeongsang National University in South Gyeongsang Province singled out teaching gender equality to children as young as elementary school students as a first step.

A former president of Korea Women’s Political Solidarity, Kwon said what were once accepted as norms aren’t always right because they might not survive changing times. Education opens up people to that idea, a notion of going with change and not going against it, according to Kwon.

“Narrowing the gap between what is and what should be requires work on multiple fronts,” said Shin Kyung-ah, a sociology professor at Hallym University in Chuncheon, Gangwon Province.

Shin pointed to fostering public discourse where both men and women of all age groups can freely weigh in on rendering Chuseok traditions less lopsided and more sustainable.

News outlets can facilitate such discourse, according to Shin.

“Aren’t we all too tired of the same old Chuseok stories making headlines with saucy anecdotes that revisit gender discrimination? We need to move on to the solution part. Stories with insight would be a boost,” Shin said.

“Education is a good start. The key is to bring out the issue in the open and really talk about it,” she said.