PEPERO DAY in Korea

‘PEPERO DAY’ which is a celebration like ‘Valentine’s Day’ only in Korea is one of the most popular celebrations even though this day is neither a traditional celebration nor a public holiday. Moreover there are very distinctive origins, features and arguments about an impure motive of companies which made PEPERO.

First of all, there are two major opinions about PEPERO DAY’s origin. The first one is that PEPERO DAY which is on November eleventh is a shape of the date in origin. November eleventh is ‘11/11’, that is, the date is included four numbers ‘1’, so it seems like that there are four sticks and PEPERO which is bar-shaped snack in Korea also looks like a stick as the date does. Therefore November eleventh became PEPERO DAY because of this similarity of the shape. The second one is that LOTTE, a Korean company which makes PEPERO, creates the date to promote their product. This opinion blames the company and date, but it is just one of the ideas about PEPERO DAY’s origin. Although there are also some other opinions about the origin, it is not clear that when the date became PEPERO DAY and who made the date. According to research released by K-Research, which is one of the Korean research centers, over ninety five percent of people participated in the survey answered that they know and enjoy PEPERO DAY, but all of the people did not know about the origin. In this manner, PEPERO DAY is one of the famous celebrations in Korea despite uncertainty about origin.

There are distinctive features in PEPERO DAY compared to other celebrations. For one thing, PEPERO DAY is not a holiday and celebration assigned by government or traditional culture such as Halloween, President’s Day or Thanksgiving. There are not general forms to enjoy the date as people go to party in Halloween. People are able to enjoy without considerations for the date because they do not have to prepare for a special plan, for instance a party, dating and event. Another one is that even though PEPERO DAY means a celebration for couples like Valentine Day, many people give and take PEPERO from each other as just an expression of friendship. Therefore PEPERO DAY is able to become more widely practiced to people in Korea because the date is free and general without a special custom.

PEPERO DAY has been the subject of some debate about whether the celebration is exploitive or not because of the following reason. Some people insist that the company misleads consumers with a sales gimmick to promote its products since PEPERO made by LOTTE which is the biggest confectionery company in Korea. When PEPERO DAY is coming, most kinds of snack include PEPERO increase in price and the company’s income soars. According to the research released by K-Research, PEPERO’s price on PEPERO DAY is more expensive about ten percent than ordinary days and about thirty percent of the company’s annual incomes is from sales of PEPERO on the date. Moreover the debate surrounding PEPERO DAY’s impure motive of companies is being more and more serious because many kinds of PEPERO are made at a very high price by the other confectionery companies.

There are many holidays and celebrations in Korea and especially PEPERO DAY is one of the most well-known celebrations although the date has no exact origin and is not assigned by government. Additionally, PEPERO DAY spread to every generation without a general form for celebrating the date. If Just people consider the argument about PEPERO DAY’s commercial potential carefully, PEPERO DAY is able to be a representative celebration of Korea.