8 LBlast from the Past
blast from the past
Leap Month in a Leap Year
If you take a look at your 2020 made-in-Korea calendar, you will see that this year is a leap year. And if you look closely, you will likely also discover that most of the month of June falls within a “leap month” this year – a 29-day additional 4th lunar month falling between May 23 and June 20. Accordingly, this month’s “Blast from the Past” article features much of an article originally appearing in the October 2006 issue of the Gwangju News, “The Way Koreans Are Obsessed with a Leap Month,” written by Prof. Shin Sang-soon (1922–2011) and now amply supplemented with additional material. — Ed.
www.gwangjunewsgic.com
June 2020
T
he solar calendar has a leap year; every fourth year, February has 29 days, as it does this year, instead of its standard 28. It is usually the custom for a man to ask a woman to marry him, but in a leap year, and especially on February 29, it is the custom that a woman can ask a man to marry her, according to Irish and British tradition. In the Western world, babies born on February 29 have been considered to be creative, having a “sixth sense”; being born on a leap day was considered lucky. This suggests that the solar leap year, especially February 29, is looked forward to by many a woman. In this sense, the leap year in Western culture can be regarded as an auspicious time. Korea has used the lunar calendar for a long, long time. It was only from the time of the 1894 Gabo Reforms that Korea started using the solar calendar. The lunar calendar “year” was one of twelve cyclically recurring terms indicated by two Chinese characters that were a combination of the 10 heavenly stems and the 12 earthly branches, which combined linearly into 60 combinations [see Gwangju News, January 2020, pp. 8–10 for details].
So, the same combination of year names, for example, gapja (갑자), recurs every 60 years. This is why the allimportant 60th birthday is called hwangap (환갑, “the return of the beginning”). In a long history like that of Korea’s, indication of the year by one of only sixty terms makes for much confusion. So, in recording historical events, the reigning king’s name was attached to the cyclical year name (e.g., Sejong-gapja, 세종갑자, “the year gapja during the reign of King Sejong”). As an aside, Japan also started using the solar calendar from the time of the 1868 Meiji Restoration. Obsession with a Leap Month Rather than having an extra day every so many years, the Korean lunar calendar (which is actually a lunisolar calendar) has an extra month added every so many years. The lunar leap month (yuntal, 윤달) has a special meaning for Koreans. Even though it has now been over a century since Korea adopted the solar calendar, the lunar calendar still occupies an important position in Korean life, especially in agriculture and fishery. The 24 seasonal divisions (jeolgi, 절기) of the lunar calendar are thought
