Almost as matter of course, the festivals are used as means of extortion and oppression of the people by the officials, who grind the masses mercilessly to provide the necessary resources for the waste and luxury of the capital and the court. New Year’s day is not only the greatest of all Corean feasts in universal observance, but is also the only real Sabbath time of the year, when for days together all regular employments cease and rejoicing reigns supreme. All debts must be paid and accounts squared up, absentees must return, and children away from home must rejoin the family. The magistrates close the tribunals, no arrests are made, and prisoners held to answer for slight offences are given leave of absence for several days, after which they report again as prisoners. All work, except that of festal preparation, ought to cease during the last three days of the old year. It is etiquette to begin by visits on New Year’s Eve, though this is not universal. On New Year’s morning salutations or calls are made on friends, acquaintances, and superiors. To this rule there must be no exception, on pain of a rupture of friendly relations. The chief ceremony of the day is the sacrifice at the tablets of ancestors. Proceeding to the family tombs, if near the house, or to the special room or shelf in the dwelling itself, the entire family make prostrations. Costly ceremonies, with incense-sticks, etc., regulated according to the family purse, follow. This is the most important filial and religious act of the year. In cases where the tombs are distant, the visit must not be postponed later than during the first month. After the ancestral sacrifices, comes the distribution of presents, which are enclosed in New Year’s boxes. These consist of new dresses, shoes, confectionery, jewelry for the boys and girls, and various gifts, chiefly cooked delicacies, for neighbors, friends, and acquaintances. For five days the festivities are kept up by visits, social parties, and entertainments of all sorts. The ordinary labors of life are resumed on the sixth day of the new year, but with many, fun, rest, and frolic are prolonged during the month. The tenth day of the second month is the great house-cleaning day of the year, when mats are taken up and shaken, the pots, kettles, and jars scoured, and the clothing renovated. Tomb-cleaning day occurs in the third month. On this occasion they make offerings of food to their ancestors, and cleanse tombs and tablets. It is a busy time in the graveyards, to which women transfer their straw scrubbers, dippers, and buckets, when monuments and idols are well soused and scoured. It is more like a picnic, with fun and work in equal proportions.