The Folk Museum had many dioramas with traditional village settings. You saw examples of food and clothing as well as annual holiday customs. There were dioramas of women weaving clothing and making soybean paste called deng-jahng and the pickled cabbage kimchee. There were displays of different holidays such as the Korean Thanksgiving day Chuseok and Dano, the fifth day of the fifth lunar month.
There were diagrams of the Korean floor heating system called ondol. Instead of heating air and circulating it out from a Western-style air duct, Koreans heat up water to steam the underside of the floor. Since heat rises, the heated floor warms the air in the room. It’s a pretty effective way to keep warm during frosty winters.
There were also the rites of passage that people go through: weddings, funerals, and birthdays. You celebrate baek-il (100 days) when a baby is 100 days old. Due to high infant mortality, people celebrated the event when a baby made it to its 100th day. The sixtieth birthday is called hwangap. In Chinese astrology, there are twelve signs for each year—rat, cow, tiger, rabbit, dragon, snake, horse, sheep, monkey, rooster, dog, and pig. Each animal has five different elements—fire, water, earth, wood, and metal. With the combination of the twelve animal signs and the five elements, it takes 60 years for the exact same combination to cycle around again. In the traditional wedding ritual called pye-baek, the parents of the couple throw dates and chestnuts to wish the couple many children. The bride catches them in her skirt. The number caught signifies how many children she is fated to have. There was the shamanic kut ritual that a mu-dahng (Korean shaman) performs when people die to make sure the spirit of the departed does not haunt the family of the deceased.
What particularly interested me was the intricate table setting for Chuseok. My sister and I were visiting Korea for the first time during Chuseok. There is a particular order of the traditional foods served during Chuseok. I happened to visit Palm Springs right before my trip to Korea, so I bought dried dates for my family since I was seeking items that were particularly Californian—such as Napa wines, dates from Cabazon, and Ghirardelli chocolate from San Francisco. As it turned out, dates are actually one of the traditional dishes for Chuseok.
When you celebrate Chuseok, you give thanks and prayers to your dead family members. You perform rites that are Buddhist in origin by offering food and pouring a drink to your ancestors. The idea of "pouring one for your homies" is not an original idea that belongs to African Americans but is religious in origin that goes back even to the Greeks who poured out some wine to the Greek gods.
So it is in examining the clothing, foods, and customs that are particular to a specific country that I continue to remember that people are universally the same.