Ajumma's Take on Korean Halloween

Many people have been asking me if Korean's celebrate Halloween. The answer is no; however, I did see a very small number Korean's dressed up in costume on the Saturday night of Halloween weekend. But the foreigners living in Korea celebrate Halloween together. We ventured into Hongdae (the foreigner/Korean club district in Seoul) on Saturday night to check out the Halloween scene and go to a foreigner Halloween party at a club called Soundaholic. Hongdae's streets are always packed with "party people" from 10 pm straight until 6 am. It is a great environment to spend your weekends in; especially if it is Halloween. Since the area is full of foreigners the streets were littered with costumes. It even had the same feeling of Halloween on State Street (which made our Wisco crew so happy!)

For costumes, (thanks to Quinn's brilliant idea) most of my friends and I dressed up as AJUMMA'S. An ajumma is a older married Korean women. They are characterized as short women, with short permed hair. They always are wearing massive visors and ridiculously patterned and colored pants, shirts and vests (many ajummas also love to rock rhinestones). Ajumma's are also notorious for their feisty attitude. They are the ones to start fights on the streets and push people out of the way in order to get a seat on the subway. Overall, the ajumma's of Korean are a "hoot" (dana erdmann) and we thought it would be halairous to dress as them for Halloween. Here are some pictures I found online of Korean Ajumma's.
We were alittle nervous our costumes would possible offend some Koreans; but in the contrary, they were a HUGE hit. It was like having the best costume on State Street. Every two Koreans that would pass our large group of ajumma's would want to take a picture of us or with us. I felt like a celebrity. It was a blast and one of my favorite nights I have had in Korea! Check out some of the pictures from my Korean Halloween as an ajumma.Here is a short video of my friends Eric and Quinn (men dressed as ajumma's) dancing like celebrities in the streets of Hongdae.