추석 also known as 한가위, is Koreas autumn harvest festival, similar to thanksgiving or other such celebrations. Its celebrated in both North and South Korea and lands on the 15/8 on the lunar calendar so it changes each year, but for 2023 it lands on September 28 – 30th.
Korean Liberation Day on August 15th marks the anniversary of South Korea’s independence from Japanese rule on August 15, 1945. This is also a key date because it’s one of the few holidays that both the North and South share in common.
As of just this week South Koreans are now a year or two younger! Now this isn’t literal, if you and your Korean friend were both born in 2000 they are not suddenly younger than you. For the longest time Koreans had a separate age system that added a year to a persons age. Well not anymore!
Sino-Korean basically means that a specific words source is originally Chinese. About 60% of Korean has Chinese origins as a basis. Words like 인간 (person/human) use the Chinese character (or hanja in Korean) 人 make the 인 in 인간.