Public Holidays in Korea (Red Days)

Hello! I want to share general information about public holidays in Korea that I wish I knew when I first lived here over a decade ago. There are red days in Korea. These are public holidays that most of Korea celebrate, and they are found written in red ink on Korean calendars. Here are the days found on publicholidays.co.kr:

You can find more information on public holidays in Korean on https://www.law.go.kr

On red days, most public facilities like schools, government offices, and banks are typically closed. I learned that it's important to check if a business is opened or closed on their Naver page or website. If they don't have one of these, the business may have an instagram or Kakao page to check their opening hours. Not all companies close during the national public holidays, though.

There are also some holidays in Korea, like Labor Day, when some companies do celebrate it and their opening hours are closed for that day. For example, my husband's workplace celebrates Labor Day so he does not have to work on May 1st. However, my workplace does not celebrate this day, and I do work on this date. I do feel lucky, though, because my school celebrates both Korean public holidays and big American public holidays, like Thanksgiving.

Here's a tip for traveling during these national public holidays. Most traffic will flow from away from Seoul within the country 1-2 days before the holiday or the day of the holiday itself. Traffic will typically travel back towards Seoul the day after the holiday. Our next upcoming public holiday is Buddha's birthday and Children's Day. They are on the same day, on May 5th. May 6th is also a designated holiday. These designated holidays help families spend more time together and also allows more free time to allow families to travel. During this holiday weekend, most people will start traveling on the Friday or Saturday before to see their families or to go on vacation. The roads, train stations, bus stations, and airports will be busier than normal. On Tuesday, the 6th, this will be the same.

This is all that I have to share for now. ^_^