With the Chuseok holiday about a week away, attention is focusing on whether Monday, September 28, will be designated as a temporary holiday.
Last year, National Foundation Day, Hangeul Day, weekends, and alternative holidays lined up, allowing people to take up to 10 days off by using a single day of annual leave on a Friday.
In contrast, this year's Chuseok holiday spans three days from Thursday, September 24, to Saturday, September 26.
Even adding Sunday, September 27, the holiday period stops at four days.
This is because this year's Chuseok holiday does not overlap with Sunday or other public holidays, meaning an alternative holiday does not apply to September 28.
The current Regulations on Public Holidays of Government Offices apply different criteria for alternative holidays depending on the type of public holiday.
National holidays such as Liberation Day, National Foundation Day, and Hangeul Day, as well as Children's Day, designate the next non-holiday as an alternative holiday if they overlap with a Saturday or Sunday.
However, Seollal (Lunar New Year) and Chuseok are different.
An alternative holiday is created only when the holiday period overlaps with Sunday, and overlapping with Saturday alone does not generate an alternative holiday.
Of course, the government can designate necessary days as temporary holidays through deliberation by the Cabinet meeting.
Previously, ahead of Seollal last year, the government designated January 27, 2025, as a temporary holiday on January 14 of the same year, allowing a six-day break by combining the weekend and the Seollal holiday.
However, some views suggest that the justification for designating September 28 as a temporary holiday this year is not significant.
This is because criticisms have been raised that designating a temporary holiday could lead to an increase in outbound travel demand rather than domestic economic revitalization.
In fact, during the Seollal holiday last year, a six-day break was created due to the designation of a temporary holiday, and at that time, approximately 2,972,000 people departed overseas, marking a record high for a monthly basis.
The burden on businesses is also a variable.
If a holiday is designated abruptly, it can cause production disruptions due to suspended operations as well as additional costs such as holiday pay.
So far, it is known that the government is not officially reviewing plans to designate September 28 as a temporary holiday.
Reported by Jung Da-eun | Video by Kim Na-on | Graphics by Lee Jeong-ju | Produced by SBS Digital News
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