By Kim Hyelin and Kim Minji

Photos = Korea.net DB

To celebrate Seollal (Lunar New Year), one of Korea's two biggest holidays that runs from Jan. 24-27 this year, major museums and palaces will offer numerous events including concerts, traditional experiences and shopping.

An array of unique music performances is scheduled over the four-day period. The National Museum of Korea in Seoul's Yongsan-gu District on Jan. 26 will hold a performance featuring ska music combined with traditional Korean rhythms, and the National Hangeul Museum will hold the concert "Sound little Sound."

Musician and composer Park Ji-ha, who plays the piri (a cylindrical double-reed bamboo oboe) and the saenghwang (a free-reed mouth organ made from 17 bamboo pipes) will perform "creative" music using traditional Korean and other instruments with French musician Remi Klemensiewicz.

Offering an interactive cultural experience, the National Folk Museum in Seoul's Gyeongbokgung Palace will hold demonstrations of customs traditionally observed during Seollal and folk games.

Visitors can learn customs like setting a charye (ancestral rite) table and performing sebae (prostration to elders) at the museum on Jan. 24 and 26. They can try traditional games like jegichagi (kicking a shuttlecock) and tuho (arrow throwing) or make a traditional kite, a shuttlecock made of Hanji (traditional Korean paper), a Hanji plate featuring the Year of Rat and several fashion accessories.

Other events include an augmented reality experience of playing children's folk games and a contest for people wearing Hanbok. Competitors can post their pictures on social media and enter a drawing to win the "Today's Hanbok Award," with souvenirs going to the winners.

The Seollal holiday is also great for shopping and traveling in the country. Korea Grand Sale, running through Feb. 29, is a festival of shopping, Hallyu and tourism for foreign visitors, offering discounts not only on retail purchases but also domestic tourism packages linked to deals from Korean airlines.

Chinese college students will be exempt from visa fees during their vacation period and Philippine, Vietnamese and Indonesian tourists on group tours can transfer to province-bound flights at the airport without a visa when flying to Jeju Island.

The National Museum of Contemporary Art will offer free admission at its branches in Seoul; Gwacheon, Gyeonggi-do Province; Seoul's Deoksugung Palace; and Cheongju, Chungcheongbuk-do Province, over the Seollal period as well as 21 palaces and royal tombs including Gyeongbokgung, Changdeokgung, Changgyeonggung and Jongmyo Shrine. Other historical sites like Hyeonchungsa Shrine in Asan, Chungcheongnam-do Province, and Yeongneung, the royal tomb of King Sejong the Great in Yeoju, Gyeonggi-do Province, will also have free admission.

More information is available on the following websites.

National Museum of Korea:                    http://www.museum.go.kr/site/eng/home
National Hangeul Museum:                    https://www.hangeul.go.kr/lang/en/
National Folk Museum:                           https://www.nfm.go.kr/english/index.do
Korea Grand Sale:                                  https://en.koreagrandsale.co.kr/index002
National Museum of Contemporary Art: https://www.mmca.go.kr/eng/

kimhyelin211@korea.kr