By Youngseo B. (Sunny B.), 3rd grade

Korean Flag

I’m going to tell you about South Korea, and its traditional food, clothing, and instruments, a national flower and flag.

Korean Traditional Food

Kimchi

Kimchi

Japchae

Japchae

There is Kim-Chi, Thock-Kook, Jap-Chae for the traditional food. Kim- Chi is the food that we eat almost everyday and we could make that food at home. It’s made out of spicy red stuff. And Jap-Chai we just eat that on New Year’s Days.

Korean Traditional Clothing

There are traditional clothing called  Han-Bouck. They wear this clothing on New Year’s Day . Long, long ago, the queens and kings wore  this clothing, and some rich wore this clothing.

Korean Traditional Instruments

And there is Jang-goo, Kom-en-go and those kinds of stuff. These are the Korean traditional instruments. A Jan-goo is like a drum but you hang them on your shoulder and it has two sides and two drum sticks. A Kom-en-go has almost  12 or more strings and you put the instruments on the ground and you are plucking the string even like a violin.  You put your fingers down on the string (almost putting the finger like a violin or viola).

Korean Traditional Flower

The traditional flower  called Moo-Goong-Ha. Its color can be white or pink. A Moo-Goong-Ha has 5 or 6 sides.  The special thing about the flower is there is a light purple kind of popping out of it. And they are rare at summer or spring at Korea.

Korean Traditional Dance

Korean Fan DanceThere are special traditional dances. And I know a few of them. One of them is called the Fan Dance. That dance is like dancing with a fan, and I danced that with the children from the Korean Central Church children’s team. The Fan Dance was so beautiful because they have waves and they move together like a flower!  We performed it at the Asian Festival and K-Night (Korean Night).

Korean Sports

A black blet practices taekwondo

Taekwondo

Many Koreans also practice Tae-Kwan-Do. I saw Tae-Kwan-Do at Korean-Night, too. It’s almost like Karate. But it is from Korea. It has white belt to black belt, and it takes a lot of practice. Even when you get to black belt, there is black belt level one to nine, and nine is the hardest.