Korean New Year Fortune Customs — From Seollal to the First Full Moon

From Seollal to Daeboreum — The Season of New Year Fortune

In traditional Korea, greeting the new year was not a single day's event but a festival stretching over two weeks and more. It opened on Seollal, the first day of the lunar year, with ancestral rites and formal bows to elders; the first days of the year were then given over to fortune readings and blessing customs; and the season peaked and closed on Daeboreum, the first full moon of the year. With Ipchun — the solar start of spring, around February 4th — falling in the same stretch, the first month became a time for laying out the year's fortunes.

The customs of this season fall into three broad kinds: divination, like reading the Tojeong Bigyeol to preview the year; blessing-invitation, like hanging a lucky strainer or pasting spring couplets; and warding, like chasing off the shoe-stealing ghost or cracking nuts against illness. The table below lays out the representative customs of the first lunar month by date.

Tojeong Bigyeol — The Most Beloved New Year Reading

The throne of new year divination has long belonged to the Tojeong Bigyeol, a fortune book that derives a hexagram-like figure from one's birth year, month, and day and reads from it the fortunes of each of the year's twelve months. The book bears the name of Yi Ji-ham, the eccentric mid-Joseon scholar known by his pen name Tojeong — yet it appears to have actually spread among the public only in the late Joseon period, around the 19th century, long after his death. The prevailing view is that later authors borrowed the famous sage's name and authority.

Its readings come as short, evocative verses: "You will meet a helpful stranger in the east," or "Guard your tongue in the third month." Even the readings for unlucky months lean toward counseling caution and restraint rather than pronouncing doom, always leaving room for the reader to escape trouble by being careful. This gentle rhetorical style is much of why the book settled into Korean life as a mindset-setting new year ritual rather than an object of dread.

A family gathered around the Tojeong Bigyeol in the first days of the year remained a common new year scene well into the 20th century, and the custom continues today in the new year fortune corners of portals and fortune services. For a deeper look at how the book's readings are constructed, see our dedicated Tojeong Bigyeol guide.

Objects That Invite Fortune — The Lucky Strainer and the Fortune Pouch

At dawn on Seollal, households hung a bokjori — a lucky rice strainer — on the wall. The jori was the everyday tool used to rinse rice and lift out the clean grains while leaving the grit behind, and the custom borrowed that image: may the year's fortune be scooped up and gathered in just as the strainer gathers good rice. Peddlers roamed the alleys before daybreak crying "Lucky strainers for sale!", and it was said that the earlier you bought yours, the more fortune would come in — so many households hurried out at first light.

The bokjumeoni, or fortune pouch, was both a practical item and a charm in a clothing culture where the hanbok had no pockets. A pouch embroidered with auspicious characters for longevity or fortune, tied onto a child's new year clothes and filled along with new year money, was believed to hold the year's luck inside it. The pouch's silhouette still appears everywhere in Korean new year design and gift wrapping — a living trace of the custom.

Chasing the Yagwanggwi — Outwitting a Ghost with a Sieve

On the night of Seollal, a ghost called the Yagwanggwi was said to slip down among the houses, try on people's shoes, and steal whichever pair fit its feet. Losing your shoes to the ghost meant bad luck for the whole year — so on new year's night, families brought every pair of shoes indoors, put out the lights early, and went to bed.

The charm against it is the delightful part. Hang a fine-meshed sieve on the gate or wall, and the ghost — unable to resist — abandons its shoe hunt and begins counting the holes. It keeps losing count and starting over, again and again, until the rooster crows and it must flee empty-handed. Defeating a fearsome spirit not with force but by exploiting its foolishness, the tale captures the humor with which Koreans traditionally disarmed even bad luck itself.

Bows and Blessings — Fortune Given in Words

The sebae, the formal new year bow of Seollal morning, was more than a greeting: it was an exchange of fortune. When the younger generation bowed, elders answered with deokdam — spoken blessings such as "This is the year your wish comes true." Traditionally, a proper deokdam was phrased as if the hoped-for event had already happened, reflecting the old belief that words themselves carry the power to bring things about.

Blessings were therefore tailored to the listener's circumstances: marriage for the marriageable, success in examinations for the student, prosperity for the merchant. Compared with today's all-purpose "May you receive much new year fortune," the old culture of deokdam — imagining the specific shape of another person's good year and speaking it into being — was itself a warm and generous fortune custom.

Daeboreum — Nut Cracking, Heat Selling, and Wishes on the Moon

Daeboreum, the fifteenth day of the first month and the year's first full moon, was a festival to rival Seollal itself. On its morning came bureom kkaegi — cracking hard-shelled nuts such as chestnuts, walnuts, and pine nuts with one's teeth, one for each year of one's age. Doing so was believed to keep boils and skin trouble away for the year and to strengthen the teeth. A cup of cold "ear-brightening wine" (gwibalgisul) taken the same morning was said to sharpen the ears and bring good news throughout the year.

Deowipalgi, or "heat selling," is the most playful of the Daeboreum customs. Before sunrise, you called out a friend's name — and if they absentmindedly answered, you shouted "Buy my heat!" With that, your share of the coming summer's swelter was sold to them. A friend who saw it coming would refuse to answer and fire back "Buy mine first!" — and this little duel of wits was itself one of the joys of the season.

After sunset, people climbed to high ground to greet the rising moon. The first person to see the year's first full moon was said to receive its luck, so people raced one another up the hills, made their wishes for the year to the moon, and even read the coming harvest in its color and shape. Sharing ogokbap — a five-grain rice of glutinous rice, millet, sorghum, beans, and red beans — with neighbors rounded out the day, spreading the year's fortune around the village.

Ipchuncheop — A Wish Posted at the Door of Spring

Ipchun, falling around February 4th, is the first of the 24 solar terms, and traditional calendars treated it as the true starting point of the year. On its morning, households pasted strips of paper on their gates and pillars bearing the phrase "Ipchun daegil, geonyang dagyeong" — roughly, "Great luck with the start of spring; may bright energy bring abundant joy." These strips are called ipchuncheop, Korea's spring couplets.

It was a modest, homely custom: households with a good hand wrote their own, while others asked a neighbor known for fine calligraphy. By convention the old couplet was never torn down — the new year's strip was simply pasted over it at the next Ipchun. Spring couplets can still be spotted on hanok gates and shop entrances today, and this habit of opening the year with well-chosen words sits naturally alongside the modern culture of new year resolutions.

The Old Customs in Modern Dress

The habit of previewing the year's fortune in its first days continues vigorously today, only in new forms. As the year turns, portals and apps roll out their new year fortune and Tojeong Bigyeol services side by side, and searches spike in the first week of January. The medium has shifted from woodblock books and fortune-tellers' rooms to digital services, but the impulse — "the new year has come; time to see what it holds" — is much the same as in a Joseon household at the first of the year.

Psychology offers a good guess at why the custom has survived so long. A new year reading provides an occasion to organize one's thoughts about the year ahead, and it converts vague anxiety into concrete, manageable language — "be careful in the third month" is easier to hold than a formless unease. There is, of course, no scientific evidence that fortunes foretell the actual future, so the healthy way to enjoy the tradition is as a pleasant opening ritual for the year's planning rather than a binding prediction.

New Year Divination Around the World

Korea is far from alone in divining the year at its threshold. In Japan, visitors making hatsumode — the first shrine visit of the year — draw paper fortunes called omikuji, ranked from great blessing to curse, and tie the unlucky slips to branches or racks at the shrine so the bad luck stays behind. Across the Chinese cultural sphere, spring couplets on red paper are pasted on doorways at Lunar New Year — a close cousin of Korea's ipchuncheop.

In the West, new year horoscopes fill magazines and media through the holiday season, and the custom of making New Year's resolutions occupies some of the same ground fortune readings do elsewhere. The methods differ from country to country, but the underlying wish is strikingly uniform: at the seam between years, to look back on the time passed and load the time ahead with good meaning. New year fortune customs are, in the end, one shared human hope dressed in each culture's own clothes.

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