Chusok, or harvest moon festival, is a popular folk holiday falling on the 15th of the eighth month by the lunar calendar.
   From old days the Korean people celebrated the day to commemorate the bumper harvest and to honour their ancestors.
   That day people offered to their ancestors foods prepared with early rice and other grains such as mung bean, adzuki bean and soy bean.
   And on the eve of the holiday, they prepared holiday dishes, typically rice cakes made of newly harvested crops, soups, wine and sweets.
   They made a variety of rice cakes including glutinuous rice cake, and the one most associated with the holiday is songphyon, half-moon-shaped rice cake stuffed with beans and cooked on a layer of pine needles.
   Nochi (fermented glutinous rice pancake) is peculiar to the Pyongyang area, the rice cake made with fresh persimmon to the Kangwon provincial area, oat cake to the Hamgyong provincial area, and the glutinous rice cake with mellowed persimmon to the Jolla provincial area.
   Every family prepared various soups with meat, fish, beancurd and dried edible herbs, and taro soup was much favoured in Kaesong and Jolla Province.