The Journey

Korean Birthdays

Last week we had a mass birthday party for all the kindergarten kids who celebrated their birthdays between Halloween and Christmas.

It seems that at some point each of the kids will get to celebrate their birthday at school and be given a present by each of the other students. Last week's party consisted of the usual dressing up nice and posing for endless (unsmiling) photos before a mass present giving session ensued.

Despite the party at school kids here don't get the fun games kids enjoy at western birthday parties. After (a form of) happy birthday was sang in Korean, (video below) the kids posed for hundreds of photos and the presents were given out it was time for lunch. I'm glad I wasn't a kid in Korea, where was musical statues, musical bumps or pass the parcel?

VIDEO: The kids sing happy birthday - http://www.mediamax.com/j150vsc/Hosted/DSCF3245.AVI

VIDEO: A mass present giving session - http://www.mediamax.com/j150vsc/Hosted/DSCF3280.AVI

It is also quite odd that such a big deal is made of the kids birthdays at school because often Koreans don't celebrate their individual birthdays. Instead they have a big party at New Year when everyone gets a year older. When a Korean baby is born it is automatically one year old, it then turns two on the next January 1, so this date is a birthday for every Korean citizen. If you were born on 31 December you would be two years old at when you were two days old! Strange huh! It certainly proved a challenge to work out how old the kids actually were when I arrived!

Here are some pictures of the party.

 
How much food and presents? The fried chicken was good though!

Whenever you see pictures of birthdays etc the kids are always posing in front of masses of food. I'm not sure why this is. If it is a Korean thing I guess it has something to do with showing off material wealth and making people aware that, as a country, the hard time of the past are behind them.

 
From left to right - Danny, Grace, Josh, Irene, Jane, Jim, Alex celebrate thier birthdays.

 
Danny, Grace and Alex pose in front the cake.

 
The school director poses with Grace after giving her her present from the school.

The director never seems to have a lot to do with the kids. This was the first time I'd seen him with them. He is usually quite a miserable unsmiling man - he needs to assert his power - but his face totally changed when he was with them. He was suddenly transformed into a much softer smiling man who appeared to love the kids. However he came into the room for all of five minutes to give them their presents and have his photo taken, then he was gone again. It seems strange that he doesn't make any effort to spend any time with them - especially if he actually likes them!

 
Left to right - Jane, Jim, Grace, Josh. The birthday boys and girls from Blue class show off thier presents.

• Posted by j150vsc on 20/12/2006.
• j150vsc's site