What is PEPERO day? And do we need it in Europe?

PEPERO day is a sort of Valentine’s day celebrated in South Korea, where lovers exchange chocolate, but not every chocolate, a specific and delicious one . Let me tell you more!

To begin with, PEPERO day is the 11th of November. How do you write this date in number? 11 – 11. So please now keep the visual of this sequence of ones in your mind and let me explain to you how I discovered the existence of PEPERO day.

I was fresh of the boat in Australia back in 2011 (see photo 1), I was studying general English, and as you can imagine, I had many Asian classmates (see photo 2). I loved that. To speed up my learning, I used to hang out with several Koreans and Japanese ( plus I was really into some of these girls ). Anyway, one day, suddenly one of these girls gave me some chocolate and in return asked me “where is my chocolate?”

Between my broken English and my PEPERO day’s ignorance I had no clue on what she was talking about

Another classmate with her friends came to rescue me, and they took me to a Korean shop next to Brisbane Town Hall Clock Tower (see photo 3), and they show me a new version of “heaven”. Many packages of chocolate-covered stick cookies, all flavours and many more special editions.

Do you remember the date I ask you to keep in mind? 11 – 11? PEPERO day is 11 – 11 because the date resembles the shape of the chocolate covered cookies (see photo 4). The stories and “excuses” for this unofficial celebration are many, but my favourite is the one from the 1980s down in Busan (see photo 5) the second-largest city in South Korea (over 3,5 millions, at the very South of the country – amazing city, and crazy party ) where students used to exchange boxes of PEPERO teasing each other saying something like “let’s lose some weight”.

However, that does not end there… the company who produces this tempting chocolate is LOTTE. They notice back then that the sales were higher on the 11th of November so – as every excellent company should do – created a “holiday” for themselves to sell even more. Ultimately, to have even more chocolate going around every corner of the country inhabited by over 51 millions of people – without counting the large diaspora in several countries, Australia perhaps.

Do we need PEPERO day in Europe? My answer is simple: yes, we do. Several companies have similar products, I remember a similar cookie called Mikado when I was growing up in Italy. But if we welcome LOTTE to our continent, we will open our chocolate-boundaries to an all-new level.

By the way, in case you missed it, I discovered the existence of PEPERO day the 11th of November 2011 ( 11 – 11 – 11 ) which makes it THE PEPERO DAY! Lucky me!