Day 272: Pepero Day

Today may be Remembrance Day back home in Canada, and Veterans' Day in the US, but here in Korea it's a whole other holiday altogether. And it's not related in the least bit to any world war or time of political conflict. In fact, it's quite the opposite...

Today is Pepero Day! Pepero Day is a relatively new holiday in Korea (less than ten years old) but has taken the nation by storm. Pepero Day is the day where you give your all your friends and the other people in your life you care about a pepero. Now what is a pepero? Well a pepero is a long cookie stick most often coated in chocolate. Picture a biscuit that's shaped like a stick of incense but a little bit thicker. I had never seen them before coming to Korea, but they very closely resemble Pocky Sticks if you're familiar with those (a Japanese treat that I've seen back in Canada.)

I have no idea how or why this holiday got started, but whoever makes peperos is laughing all the way to the bank I'm sure. *Millions* of these darn things are sold across Korea in a matter of days. Shopping for them is a feverish experience in itself, as Koreans go frantic in the stores trying to grab boxes and boxes of these things to give away. They're actually pretty tasty, but really, do you need to get like 43 of them from all of your friends?

As you can imagine, Pepero Day is especially popular with young children, so all my kids had talked it up all week long as the day approached. This also meant that I had to buy a pepero for every single one of my kids knowing that most of them would have one for me - all 100 plus of them! Luckily peperos are pretty inexpensive, but I also decided to 'regift' and give out peperos to afternoon kids that I had received in the morning. Again, they're tasty, but I don't need *that* many! Despite my regifting efforts, I still had several armfuls of them by the end of the day. Looks like I'll be eating peperos for quite some time!