Mangjong (芒種), the First Day of the Grain Harvest

"Mangjong" (芒種), which means "the first day of the grain harvest," is the ninth of the twenty-four seasonal sub-divisions, or solar terms, of the lunar calendar. It falls in the fifth month of the lunar calendar or around early June of the solar calendar. "Mangjong" means that the time is right for planting the seeds of "bearded" grains with bristles, such as rice and barley.

This is a good season for planting rice and cutting down barley. There are various related seasonal sayings in Korea, such as "Ripe barley is good for eating and grown-up rice is good for planting, so it’s Mangjong" and "Mangjong, the good season for eating fresh barley." Before Mangjong, however, the barley must be cut down so that rice can be planted and the fields plowed. Around this time mantises and fireflies begin to appear and plum flowers bloom.

In the rice planting and barley cutting barley season, double-cropping farmers in the south get even busier. To describe the season, Koreans say farmers are so busy that they "pee over their own feet." In the South Jeolla region, they refer to "Mangjong" as "Bori Geuseureum" (Bori Geueulleum) because the local custom is to cut off and smoke an ear of unripe barley and eat it, believing that doing so will promise a good barley harvest that year. According to a Jeju custom, during "Mangjong" islanders pull up unripe barley and gather grains by rubbing barley stalks, and then toast them in a cauldron and grind them with a stone mill to obtain powdered barley, and then boil it to make porridge. They believe that if they eat barley porridge, they won’t get stomachache from eating steamed barley rice all summer long. There was also a belief that a thunder and lightning strike on "Mangjong" was a bad omen, but that hail would bring a good year.