Baekjung: The Farmhands' Festival백중 — 머슴의 날, 농민의 축제

Baekjung falls on the fifteenth day of the seventh lunar month, in late summer, and it is really two holidays woven together. In Buddhist tradition it is Korea's version of the ullambana rite: temples hold memorial ceremonies with offerings for deceased ancestors, a custom shared with China's Ghost Festival and Japan's Obon. In farming villages, though, Baekjung meant something more down-to-earth. By this point the exhausting rounds of weeding the rice paddies were finally done, so the day became a rest festival for the people who did the hardest labor — hired farmhands. Villages held 'hoe-washing' celebrations (homissisi), literally washing the tools that would not be needed for a while, and shared food, wrestling matches, and performances. Some traditions even playfully reversed the roles of landlord and laborer for a day. The fullest surviving form is Miryang Baekjung Nori in the southeastern city of Miryang — a package of ritual, satirical dance, and farmers' music designated National Intangible Cultural Heritage No. 68 in 1980. Baekjung is little known to visitors compared with Chuseok, but it preserves something important: a premodern labor culture that understood rest, gratitude, and even a bit of social satire as things worth celebrating.