A Holiday For Singles

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 Hana R. Alberts

Not if you’re Korean–and single. That date marks Black Day, an unusual holiday that has risen in prominence and popularity across South Korea over the last 15 years.

On Black Day, unattached youth congregate at local restaurants and consume vast quantities of a cheap fast-food dish called jajangmyeon–the Korean interpretation of a Chinese recipe for noodles coated with a chunky dark sauce of pork, onions, black beans, sugar and MSG.

In South Korea, Feb. 14 is a day when, traditionally, women give chocolate and other sweets to their male love interests. On March 14–White Day–men return the favor. And those who have not given or received a present by the time April 14 rolls around gather to mourn on Black Day.

‘It’s maybe sad because they couldn’t celebrate the Valentine’s Day and the White Day,’ says Kimyo Kim, a 24-year-old Seoul resident and international marketer for a major Korean automaker. ‘But it’s not a serious thing. You just get a chance to gather with your friends and just eat and enjoy and celebrate the time.’

Still, in a culture where couples are not only esteemed but also courted by promotional deals for cellphones and movie tickets, the holiday strikes a bittersweet chord.

On the one hand, its widespread observance is a sign that young Koreans are no longer ashamed to admit that they do not adhere to older social customs, such as early marriage. At the same time, though, the jokingly superficial nature of the holiday belies the celebrants’ poignant vulnerability.

They celebrate the holiday while secretly hoping they won’t have to slurp down jajangmyeon next year.

‘I think most people want to have a boyfriend or girlfriend. I haven’t seen many people who just want the single life. I think most people want marriage,’ says Jae Lee, a 24-year-old account executive at advertising company McCann-Erikson’s Seoul office.

‘I just want to ignore the day. I don’t want to shout it to the world that ‘Oh, I don’t have a boyfriend.”

When Kim Hyun-deok Foreman was growing up in Korea, young people often hid romantic relationships out of humility. In fact, a circle of friends wouldn’t know if two of its members were seeing each other until they announced their engagement, says Foreman, professor of education at San Francisco State University.

But now that couples broadcast their status on social networking sites and sport matching head-to-toe outfits in public, singles are similarly compelled to publicly acknowledge, and thereby validate, their status.

‘With young people, it’s like if you don’t have a girlfriend or a boyfriend, you feel like you are not whole or you are not popular,’ Foreman says. ‘It’s a new thing. It’s a new phenomenon.’

Even as South Korea becomes more Westernized (its citizens now marry later and place an increased emphasis on individual accomplishment), there is still the widespread expectation that to be single is somehow not enough, according to Roald Maliangkay, a senior lecturer at Australian National University’s Korea Center.

‘There’s an idea in the back of their heads that the ideal of happiness is to have a proper relationship,’ Maliangkay says. ‘I read so much about Koreans trying out different things now; they want to hold off marriage. But whenever I meet my friends in Korea, all I really feel from them when we talk about relationships is that all they really want is someone to love.’

The couples culture in South Korea casts a set of pervasive expectations, according to Georgy Katsiaficas, a professor of humanities and social sciences at Wentworth Institute of Technology in Boston, Mass. But Koreans also enjoy activities that are performed en masse, for example, when large groups go out to eat in honor of recently-generated national holidays like Black Day.

‘In the United States, we all love to be our own individual, and here–one of the great things for me about Korea is being part of a group culture,’ says Katsiaficas, who is currently a visiting professor at Chonnam National University in Gwangju, a city of about 1.5 million at the southern tip of the nation.

The special noodle dish that celebrants eat on Black Day, jajangmyeon, is symbolic. The obvious reason is its color. And it requires foregoing appearances to eat it properly.

Additionally, its status as South Korea’s favorite dish means that the food is laden with warm memories, according to Jung-Sun Park, associate professor of Asian-Pacific studies at California State University at Dominguez Hills.

‘It was used as a food for celebration, for graduation–for the commoners, not the elites, but the ordinary citizens of Korea at the time. It definitely has that cultural meaning and sense of nostalgia.’

The significance of jajangmyeon was highlighted in March, when the South Korean government’s Ministry of Strategy and Finance listed the dish as one of 52 ‘necessities’ it monitors to control inflation. As a result, its status was cemented as an item most commonly purchased by middle-class families–along with other staples like rice, flour, sugar and milk.

Indeed, the day’s observants have expanded to include anyone who likes jajangmyeon, according to Bryan Jin, 25, who works in Seoul as a consultant for Wonjin Logistics. He plans to take his girlfriend out on April 14 to enjoy the signature dish, which, Jin says, costs about 400 won, or $4.11 at 975 won to the dollar.

‘[The holiday] is very normal and natural,’ says Hee-Jeong Jeong, who teaches Korean language at Cornell University. The instructional textbook she uses in her class even has passages describing Black Day. ‘Since I’m in Ithaca, [N.Y.] it’s very small.

I couldn’t find any restaurants to buy the jajangmyeon here.’ But, Jeong says, she plans to compensate by buying instant jajangmyeon at the local supermarket to eat at home. After all, she’s 34 years old and single on April 14; the expectations–both to celebrate and to find a reason not to celebrate next year–are escalating. .