While Canada and some other Western countries have designated Nov. 11th to be Rememberance Day, Nov. 11th takes on a completely different meaning in Korea. It's called Peppero Day, which pretty much translates to a national love for Pocky (the pretzel stick snacks that are usually dipped in chocolate) day. Basically, it's a giant marketing scheme for people to buy Pocky, and it's worked...
The premise of this day is based on nothing more the amusing fact that Nov. 11th is numerically written as 11/11, which looks like a bunch of sticks. And since Pocky also looks like a stick and serves as a nice chocolatey snack, it somehow turned into a Valentine's Day-esque buy-Pocky-for-others-day.
Of course, the Pocky people have prepared "special" Pocky packages to celebrate. Everywhere you go, you'll see boxes of giant Pocky the size of your arm, Pocky boxes wrapped in baskets with stuffed teddy bears inside, and individually wrapped Pocky sticks with hearts printed on them. It's everything would you expect from Valentine's except instead of all different kinds of chocolate, it's pretty much only Pocky.
It's pretty interesting seeing a sort of Valentine's in Feb., but hey, I'm not complaining... I got some nice goodies from my kids :D
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