Happy Army Day!

Today is Army Day. It used to be a day off (how good would that have been? Mon-Wed off for Choo-seok then Fri off for this!) but now it ain't.


Kimchi Rambos (source)

There are lots of holidays here that fall on specific days (like 개천절/gay-cheon-jeol or National Foundation Day, Oct. 3rd; and 한글날/han-geul-nal or Korean Writing Day on October 9th) but they don't (as sometimes in the West) take the next business day off (as we do in Canada for Victoria Day on July 1st or in British Columbia for BC Day on August 1st). Boo hoo. Well, I guess Choo-seok is enough. If we got Army and Foundation day off (or the next business day) we'd only have 1 work day out of 10 calendar days this past while (plus 한글날)...how good would that be for the country? This year Christmas and New Year's Day are on Sundays too...and I'll likely be in Seoul. Looks like I'll be the Maytag Repairman as most of my foreign contacts (the guys I do business with) will have that week off. Hmmm....got to find a place to hide-out for that time.


I foresee this in my future in late December...unless I find an outlet.

I actually looked this stuff up a while back...in 2003 Koreans had more holidays than almost every country in the world (in fact, I think it was more than every country!) including Israel. If word of this gets out schoolkids around the world will be claiming Korean heritage to get the Choo-seok and 설날/seol-nal (Lunar New Year) holidays off.

Ok, time to work...