You might be surprised to find out that today happens to be a day especially set apart for declarations of love. Yes, the 17th of September – what seems to be just another day in a month – is the designated ‘Confession Day’ in Korea, in which all of us who suffer from unrequited love are perhaps given a tiny boost of an excuse to do the unthinkable.
There is quite the logical reason for the day being today, and that is that if you happen to succeed in changing your relationship status today, your 100th day as a couple will fall exactly on Christmas. How romantic indeed.
However, if you happen to be booing inside, you are definitely not alone. These who-knows-how-they-were-invented days in Korea are mostly geared towards couples, and some if not most of them are outright ridiculous. For example, along with the very popular Pepero Day (falling on the 11th of N
ovember, or 11.11, which of course naturally reminds one of the shape of Peperos) which encourages the abundant exchange of Peperos, a chain of holidays celebrating snacks such as the Ace Day (October 30th), Sae-woo-kkang Day (November 12th), and Go-rae-bab Day (December 12th) have followed suit. You can imagine all the this-is-just-an-industrial-scam theories and the slew of comments from the singles, blaming whoever came up with these ungodly holidays.
There are, however, a few of these days that have found their place in society and have firmly rooted as widely-recognized and celebrated holidays, and these days are almost just as important as Valentine’s Day in Korea. Valentine’s Day itself, while it can be a both-sided affair as it is in most other countries, is more a day for the women to prepare chocolate for the men, and White Day (March 14th) is a day for the men to gift candy in return.
As a general rule, the 14th day of any given month is a something-day in Korea – April 14th is Black Day, a day for all the singles who have not received anything for Valentine’s or White Day to eat Jajangmyeon. Finally, a day for the singles.