대보름 (Dae Bo Reum) The first full moon of the Lunar New Year!

It seems like each year, around this time, Anne and I have stumbled across a big bonfire on Gwangan beach. (That's the way it has been in my mind anyway^^). Now, I finally know what it is, kind of. You can read about the tradition here and here. While we were out enjoying the early spring weather and having coffee late last week, we noticed the 'daljib' (translates literally as moon house, but takes the form of a big bonfire) being put together.

Today we met with Shryl to watch the festivities and see it set alight. The beach was pretty packed and many ajummas had brought along bags of all descriptions with unknown contents, to be placed on the bonfire. We were all very curious about what was behind this because we hadn't noticed it before. Jinho later explained that the bags would have contained items that represented bad memories or bad luck from the previous year, and the burning of them symbolises releasing the bad luck.
What really surprised us was the commitment the ajummas had to making sure their bags went on that fire! Even after it had been set alight, (and the blaze was HUGE), a couple of sneaky women ran past the police to get close enough to throw their bags on!