Omogari Korean restaurant owner Peter Yi, holds a bowl of tteok guk, or rice cake soup, in San Jose, Calif., on Monday, Jan. 9, 2023. Tteokguk is one of the traditional Korean foods eaten on Lunar New Year’s Day. (Ray Chavez/Bay Area News Group)
Every year around this time, San Jose’s Peter Yi and his family gather around the breakfast table to share what is arguably the most important meal of the year for Koreans: Bowls of steaming hot tteok guk, a beef broth and rice cake soup, to mark the start of Seollal, or Korean Lunar New Year.
“By eating the rice