February 26 this year is Jongwoldaeborum, or folk holiday which falls on the fifteenth day of the first month by lunar calendar.
Since olden times, the Korean people have celebrated the day on a large scale as folk holiday next to the lunar New Year’s Day.
They have cooked and eaten such typical foods as ogokpap (a dish made with all five grains) and dishes made of nine kinds of dried greens.
Ogokpap is made of five kinds of grains, especially rice, millet, kaoliang, soybean and adzuki bean, and the grains differ according to localities.
The nine-dried-green dish is prepared with hot pepper leaf, bracken, osmund, goosefoot and others in Pyongyang, and platycodon, Codonopsis lanceolata, aster, brown seaweed and others in the area of Hamgyong province. They were called “black edible herbs” as the colour of dried edible greens is black.
Folk have said that such dishes on the day make people highly resistant to intense heat and diseases as well that year.
The custom of preparing and eating ogokpap and nine edible greens is associated with the love for their native land of the Korean people, who have created the way of dietary life of their own and developed food culture by using different food materials which are available in their localities.
It also contains the idea of the principle of taking care of their health that they can live in good health only when they have ogokpap and a variety of dried edibles evenly without having an unbalanced diet.
Such a custom is still carried on today to add national flavour.
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