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Kohui: The Korean Seventieth Birthday Celebration
| Article
# : |
18257 |
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Section : |
CULTURE
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| Issue
Date : |
10 / 1990 |
3,384 Words |
| Author
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Cho Hung Youn
Cho Hung Youn is professor of anthropology at Hanyang
University in Seoul, Korea. |
The entire family is gathered: Their mood is happy, but their deportment is quiet dignified. As they await their guests-of-honor, their attention is focused on the colorful and heavily laden table that dominates the room. For many, it is the first time for as long as ten years that they have been together, but this is not a time for chatter. They have come together in a demonstration of the affection and esteem in which they hold their senior family members and, through this gracious act of respect, to inherit the virtue, wisdom, and experience of their elders, and affirm their extended family ties.
It has long been customary in Korea to hold a grand banquet on the occasion of a person's seventieth birthday. Koreans refer to the age of seventy, as well as to the banquet itself, as kohui (rare), although the term huisu is also used. In the past, such a banquet was given at the time of one's hawangap, or sixtieth birthday: Since people's average life span was shorter than now, it was considered a great blessing for a person to live to the age of seventy.
The origins of kohui are not known with certainty. The word itself originated in the Qu Jiang Shi (Poems of the Qu River) by the Tang poet Du Fu (712-770), which contains the line "From ancient times, rare is the man who sees three score and ten." And it was a longstanding custom in Korea for the government to honor the elderly by recognizing their services and making them comfortable in their old age. It is recorded, for example, that in the fifth year of the Shilla kingdom (A.D 28) King Yuri provided sustenance to the elderly sick who were unable to support themselves, as well as to widowers, widows, orphans, and the childless. We can presume from this that the Korean
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