With Chuseok, one of Korea's representative holidays, falling on the 6th, North Korea also appears likely to take the day off to spend time with family on Chuseok day.
Korea takes at least three days off during the Chuseok holiday period, but in North Korea, only the 6th, the day of Chuseok, is a day off.
On Chuseok, people visit their ancestors' graves to pay respects and hold memorial rites with dishes made from newly harvested grains. As in the South, after the gravesite visit, there is a custom of gathering with family and relatives to share food.
Representative Chuseok foods vary by region. People eat songpyeon filled with black beans, sesame, chestnuts, jujubes, and so on, and bamdanja, made by rolling glutinous rice flour into balls and coating them with honey and boiled chestnuts as garnish.
Folk games such as ssireum, swinging, and tug-of-war are played, and the custom of making wishes while looking at the full moon at night is also similar to the South.
However, because movement is restricted in North Korea, a travel pass issued by the authorities is required to visit graves located outside one's residence.
North Korea once abolished folk holidays, including Chuseok, regarding them as feudal remnants. In 1967, President Kim Il Sung issued an order to "eradicate feudal remnants," abolishing folk holidays such as Chuseok.
Even so, the custom of visiting graves on Chuseok quietly persisted among residents. And as National Defense Commission Chairman Kim Jong Il began to emphasize "our nation-first principle" in the 1980s to safeguard the system, the Chuseok holiday was officially revived in 1988.
After undergoing the "Arduous March," there has also been a tendency to use folk holidays as an occasion to strengthen loyalty to the party and the leader, thereby reinforcing system cohesion.
Workers' Party officials and residents also lay flowers and pay tribute at sites such as the Revolutionary Martyrs' Cemetery on Daeseong Mountain, the Sinmi-ri Patriotic Martyrs' Cemetery, and the Cemetery of the Fallen Fighters in the Fatherland Liberation War.