17th July: South Korea

Today is a South Korean public holiday - Constitution day, in fact. So here are some things you may not know about South Korea.

1. There are about three thousand islands, mostly small and uninhabited, off the western and southern coasts of South Korea. Jeju-do is the largest at 1,845 square kilometres (712 sq mi). Jeju is also the site of South Korea's highest point: Hallasan, an extinct volcano, 1,950 meters (6,398 ft) above sea level. On this island, the women work and the men stay at home. The traditional occupation is diving for sea urchins, abalone, and Octopus. This goes back 1,500 years and is passed down from mother to daughter. Other islands include the Lioncourt Rocks, known as Dokdo locally, which is still disputed with Japan. Just two people live there permanently but there are also 37 South Korean national police officers on guard duty.
2. When a baby is born in South Korea it is deemed to be one year old. Officially, everyone in the country celebrates their birthday on January 1. This means a baby born on December 31 will turn two the day after it is born.
3. South Korea has some unique holidays. One is Pepero Day on 11 November. A pepero is a type of long, thin, sweet snack covered in chocolate. Somewhere along the line, people go the idea that eating 11 packets of them at 11 seconds past 11:11 will make you tall and thin. Giving peperos as gifts to loved ones is an integral part. In South Korea the 14th of every month is a romantic themed holiday of some kind. In January, Diary Day - couples give each other blank diaries; February - Valentine's Day (here, women give gifts to the men); March - White Day, when the men reciprocate and give gifts to the women which are meant to cost three times as much as the gift they got and be coloured white; April - Black Day, for singles. They eat black noodles on this day and mourn their single status; May - Yellow/Rose Day, when couples dress in yellow and give each other Roses; June - Kiss Day; July - Silver Day, for exchanging rings and talking about marriage; August - Green Day, when couples drink a spirit that comes in a green bottle and go for romantic walks in the woods; September - Photo Day/Music Day when couples take photos of each other and go to karaoke bars; October - Wine Day, when couples have a romantic meal with wine and singles drown their sorrows; November - Movie day, a date at the cinema or staying in with a DVD; and December - Hug Day.
4. Most of the people in South Korea live in large cities, like the capital, Seoul, which has a population of 10 million. This is thanks to rapid economic growth in the 1970s, 80s and 90s. The population density in the country is 505 per square kilometre in 2015, more than 10 times the global average.
5. South Korea is the home of Samsung, Hyundai and LG and has the world's highest internet speed. It is also a world leader in the field of robotics and there are already robots doing human jobs. There are robot prison guards, robot teachers, and a robot which patrols the demilitarised zone between North and South Korea. This robot is armed with a 5.5-millimetre machine gun and 40-millimetre automatic grenade launchers, but cannot use them without permission from a human.
6. The Mugunghwa (Rose of Sharon) is South Korea’s national flower. The national dish is kimchi, which consists of vegetables and spices that have been fermented underground for months. It is served with almost everything. The first written description of making kimchi dates to about AD 1250; there are about 170 varieties of the dish. On Photo Day (see Fact 3 above) people don't say "cheese" - they say "kimchi".
7. Famous South Koreans include Olympic figure skater Yuna Kim, who achieved record-breaking scores at the 2010 Winter Olympics; Ban Ki-moon, UN Secretary-General; Lee Jong-wook, former director of the World Health Organisation; and Psy, pop artist famous for the worldwide hit, Gangnam Style. Gangnam is a district of Seoul.
8. While over half of South Koreans say they have no religion, Seoul nevertheless has the world's largest church in terms of congregation. It has a million members of which as many as 500,000 turn up on any given Sunday. This is way to many to fit in the main building so the services are beamed to TV screens in satellite churches. The Yoido Full Gospel Church has three orchestras, 12 choirs, hundreds of assistants, missionaries in 67 countries, and interpreters to translate his message into 16 different languages.
9. South Koreans are the world's biggest consumers of hard liquor and are free to drink anywhere they like. In spite of this, the country has one of the highest life expectancies in the world. Men's cosmetics are also big business with South Korean men spending $900 million a year on male cosmetics, a quarter of the expenditure in the world as a whole.
10. While we in the west might ask a prospective partner what their star sign is, in South Korea, they ask what their Blood group is, for they believe a person's blood group determines their personality. Type A is reserved, perfectionist, obsessive, secretive, considerate; Bs are creative, flexible, forgetful, lazy; AB is empathic, rational, critical, ruled by their head rather than their heart; Type O is athletic, confident, arrogant, outgoing and passionate. Another superstition they have there is that leaving an electric fan on overnight will kill you.