Hello.

Hello everyone and welcome back to the Talk to Me in Korean podcast.

Since this coming Tuesday is Sarlal Lunar New Year in Korea, Sallal. I thought I would prepare a special episode explaining what

Lunar New Year in Korea really looks like, especially in modern times. So in 2026, this year,

Solal falls on February 17th. Solal is based on the lunar calendar, so it's the first day of the

first lunar month. That is why when a new year comes around, everybody kind of checks on the calendar to see,

oh, when is Sallal going to be this year?

Because they need to plan holidays and stuff around it or book train tickets, more on that later.

So in Korea, we usually get three days off for Sallal, this period, this traditional holiday period,

the day before and the day of and finally the day after.

So we call this kind of extended holiday, Yanhu, Yan is from that word,

you might know that word,

yonso, like continuation. So consecutive holidays, shu is from shuil or huca hsu, right, resting.

So consecutive days of holidays or like resting, a long holiday period, is yon hugh. So

Sallal, Yonhue, that's also a word combination

that you often hear. And during this time, there are several ways that you can greet people or people

greet each other. And the most traditional greeting is Sehe, Bok, Mani, Badeseo. Bok, we talked about it as a keyword in one of our previous episodes

on this podcast. So, Sehe, Bok, Many Badaeozeo. Happy New Year. And in literal translation,

it means, Sehe, New Year's, fortune, good luck, many badseo. Please receive a lot of it.

So that's what people say to each other.

But by the time, Solal actually comes around, which is usually in February,

sometimes in rare occasions in late January, many people have already said this phrase multiple times, maybe too many times on or around

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