Six weeks after I arrived in Korea, I fell madly in love — not with a person, but with the country itself. That winter 35 years ago, I decided on a whim to join a tour group heading east for the Lunar New Year long weekend to Gangwon Province’s Seoraksan National Park, home to one of Korea’s most famous mountain ranges. Seoul was already beginning to empty out for the holiday, and with several days off and nowhere in particular to be, the idea of disappearing into the mountains felt right. Along with Chuseok — the mid-autumn festival — Lunar New Year is one of the two most important holidays in Korea. They act as bookends to the year, with Lunar New Year falling in late January or early February and Chuseok in September or October, depending on how the lunar calendar lines up with the solar calendar that year. Both holidays center on returning to one’s hometown and honoring ancestors. They are also the busiest travel periods of the year, reminding me of American Thanksgiving. Depending on the lunar calendar, these holidays can stretch from three to five days, and in February 1
Moving US Marines out of Okinawa would be a grave mistake
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