What are the Korean birthday customs and traditions I should know about, including the famous first birthday party (돌잔치)?

Korean birthdays have some lovely traditions. On any birthday people eat seaweed soup (미역국) in the morning — it's tied to mothers and birth — and you'll get asked if you had your miyeokguk. The big one is the first birthday, 돌잔치 (doljanchi), a whole party where the baby is dressed in hanbok and does the doljabi, picking an object from a tray (like a pencil, money, or stethoscope) said to predict their future. If you're invited, bring a gift or cash in an envelope (gold rings used to be traditional), and you'll usually get a nice meal and sometimes a small return gift. Koreans also traditionally counted age differently, though the country moved to international age recently, so birthdays feel a bit more individually celebrated now.