This past Saturday, the Korean American Students of Smith (KASS) hosted their annual Korean Culture Day.
The activities, which took place in the afternoon, were intended to increase awareness of Korean culture in the Pioneer Valley community. The group began the celebrations by introducing Korea’s traditional customs and cuisine.
“This was KASS’s final all-campus event for the semester, and the executive board wanted to provide students a little relief amidst a stressful time,” said KASS secretary Mina Yoo ’14.
In past years, KASS celebrated this event by partaking in activities such as fan-making and calligraphy drawing. These activities relate to Korea’s history fan dance performances as well as scholarly scripture.
This year, Culture Day carried on its tradition of serving original Korean meals, and focused on activities that were more group-oriented and clear-cut.
“In our weekly executive board meetings, we all collectively agreed that a simple and casual affair of street food and straightforward games would make the event very approachable,” said Mina.
The games in question included yut nori (a board game with embellished sticks as the dice), gonggi (flipping small “pebbles” on the back of one’s hand), and jegichagi (Korean hacky sack): all popular pastimes and celebrations in Korea.
“[The game supplies] were accommodated by Professor Suk Massey and already a part of the KASS inventory, so setup did not prove to be challenging,” Mina explained.
KASS also prepared two kinds of cuisine for the occasion: hodduk (sugar and cinnamon-stuffed pancakes, commonly sold by Korean street food vendors) and kimchi-jeon (kimchi-filled Korean style pancakes.)
Professor Massey also contributed some raw material to the organization – namely the kimchi–jeon pancake dough – but the actual cooking and preparation was conducted by the KASS members themselves.
“It was my first time cooking, and I had so much fun. [Hodduk] seemed to be the crowd favorite,” said June Lee ’13, secretary of KASS. “We were constantly refilling the trays of food, and were oftentimes backed up because we couldn’t cook fast enough!”
“It was a nice touch to include food that was both familiar to Koreans and delicious to everyone, as well as games that bring back fond memories to some and are also easy to learn,” said Selina Lee ’16.
Attendants were widely varied. They not only included a fair number of current Smith students and students from the Five College consortium, but visiting prospective Smith students and their family members as well.
“One future Smithie brought her parents along, and her father actually taught some non-Korean students how to play yut-noori,” said Mina. “It was a fun and laughter-filled afternoon with beautiful weather, delicious food, and wonderful company.”
