February has two seasonal divisions of the year, ripchun and usu.
Ripchun, the first of the 24 seasonal divisions, signifies the opening of spring according to the lunar calendar. It usually falls around February 4th of the solar calendar.
From long ago, the Korean people used to greet ripchun, the first division of spring, with peculiar customs.
On the day, they tidied up their houses and some of them expressed their pleasure of greeting the spring in the diaries. In addition, they cooked some dishes with spring onion grown in a storage pit, leaf mustard, etc. scented with spring fragrance.
What is special about the customs related to farming around ripchun is that there were many ceremonies associated with oxen.
Usu is a term indicating the time when the snow melts and the spring rain starts to fall. It usually falls around February 18-20 of the solar calendar.
Ushering in usu, all the areas except the highlands in the north of our country start to thaw out. The peasants kept snowmelt in all pools and made haste with farming preparations.
In this season, our people used to play yut, tug-of-war, seesaw, kite-flying and other colorful folk games.
© 2021 Kim Chaek University of Technology