The First Day of the Second Lunar Month

The first day of the second lunar month (Iwol Choharu, Kor. 이월 초하루) was traditionally celebrated as a holiday. This holiday is also known as Meoseumnal (Kor. 머슴날), Nobiil (Kor. 노비일), Adeurennal (Kor. 아드렛날) and Hariadeurennal (Kor. 하리아드렛날), all meaning “Slaves’/Servants’ Day”. The festivity was originally referred to as Junghwajeol (Kor. 중화절, Chin. 中和節), named after measurement sticks (referred to as junghwacheok, Kor. 중화척, Chin. 中和尺), which the king used to bestow upon his servants on this day in order to encourage farming. The holiday is also associated with a number of folk customs.

Two of the twenty-four solar terms in the farming calendar correspond to the second lunar month – Gyeongchip (Awakening from Hibernation) and Chunbun (Spring Equinox). During this period rural communities prepared for a new farming season by returning to their farmland for the first time after the winter. In order to encourage the farmhands, the land owners presented them with new clothes and treated them to fine food. On Iwol Choharu, the servants toured the village in groups, performing music and dances as form of fund raising event known as geollip (Kor. 걸립, Chin. 乞粒). As the geollip came to a close, the servants would gather for rounds of ssireum (Kor. 씨름, Korean wrestling). Another well-known custom was harvesting rice ears from the hay-wrapped pole made on the Great Full Moon Day (the fifteenth of the first lunar month) and baking them into cakes stuffed with sweetened soybeans. Servants were served these cakes called naitteok (Kor. 나이떡, lit. age cake), with the number of cakes served corresponding to each servant’s age.

One popular treat on this day was grilled soybeans. Popular belief held that eating soybeans would help rid one’s house of millipedes. There was also a special song that was chanted aloud while stirring the beans with a spatula: “Grill the bird eggs, grill the mouse eggs.” People would also use the occasion of grilling the beans to try to predict the harvest. They placed one doe (596.4cm2) or so of soybeans, mixed with barley, in a large cauldron, and if the grilled contents remained roughly identical to the initial volume, it portended a good year for farming. Conversely, if the contents shrank in volume, it was seen as a bad omen.

In the southwestern and eastern parts of Korea, Iwol Choharu was the day of welcoming the goddess of the wind, Yeongdeung Halmeoni (Kor. 영등할머니, lit. Grandma Yeongdeung). She was believed to descend from heaven every year on the first day of the second lunar month and return to heaven after a fortnight.