Traditional Folk Festivals in the DPRK

The traditional folk festivals of the DPRK are based on the lunar calendar. Since the Three Kingdoms period, there have been many various folk festivals related to the agricultural seasons: the Spring Festival, March 3, Dragon Boat Festival, June 15, Tanabata, Mid-Autumn Festival, Chungyang Festival, Winter Solstice, and Lunar New Year's Day 15, among others.

The representative festivals at the beginning of the year are the Spring Festival and the Lantern Festival. During the Spring Festival, people clean their houses and dress up in festive costumes, pay their respects to guests and friends and neighbors to wish each other a happy New Year. When celebrating the Lunar New Year, they eat rice cake soup and welcome new year's wine. Games such as yutz and springboard are usually played on the Spring Festival.

Duanwu is a representative festival of summer. On this day, mountain burdock cakes and moxa cakes are made and eaten, and various folk games such as wrestling, swinging, tug-of-war, and masquerade dancing are played.

The Mid-Autumn Festival is a representative festival of the fall. On this day, folkloric games such as wrestling, swinging, and spinning games are played. In the textile game, the losing party has to entertain the other party with a feast as a reward, and also sing and dance, and the song sung at this time is called "Wit and Laughter Song".

The representative festival of winter is the winter solstice. On the winter solstice, people eat "winter solstice porridge". On this day, people also play Yutz and other interesting folk games, and spend a long winter night happily