What Koreans Eat on Chuseok: Songpyeon, Jeon, the Flour Mistake
Ask what Koreans eat on Chuseok (추석) and most people say songpyeon first — the half-moon rice cake stuffed with sesame, chestnut, or sweetened black beans, steamed over a bed of pine needles so it comes out faintly perfumed. That's not wrong. It's just one dish out of a full table. Chuseok 2026 falls on Friday, September 25. The official holiday runs Thursday the 24th through Saturday the 26th, and since the 26th butts right up against Sunday the 27th, most of the country ends up with four days off without touching a single vacation day. Songpyeon, and the Superstition That Comes With It Everyone in the family gets pulled into making songpyeon the night before Chuseok — it's one of the few Korean dishes that's genuinely a group project, not one cook's job. Roll the dough into a ball, press a thumb-sized well into the center, pack in the filling, pinch it shut into a half-moon. Repeat for an hour, usually with the TV on in the background. The half-moon shape i...