Grammar
N을/를 맞아
Meaning
IntermediateN eul/reul maja
Marks a date or occasion that has now arrived as the setting for what is being done: 설을 맞아 특별 행사를 엽니다 ('a special event is being held to mark Seollal'). 맞다 here means to greet or receive a day, so the phrase is literally 'greeting N'. The noun is normally something that comes round or is reached — a holiday, an anniversary, a new year, a season, a milestone — and the main clause is the event, statement or measure timed to it. It supplies the occasion, not the cause: the day explains why now, not why at all.
Form
Noun + 을 맞아 after a final consonant (광복절을 맞아), 를 맞아 after a vowel (새해를 맞아). 맞아 is the -아/어 form of 맞다; 맞아서 adds an optional 서 with no change of meaning, and 맞이하여 / 맞이해 is the same expression in a stiffer register, standard in official notices and ceremony copy. To modify a following noun, use 맞은 or 맞이한 (창립 30주년을 맞은 회사). The noun slot normally holds a date or occasion — 명절, 기념일, 새해, 개학, 창립 30주년 — and the clause that follows carries the action.
Examples
설을 맞아 특별 행사를 엽니다.
To mark Seollal, a special event is being held.
Common mistakes & nuance
Read it as the occasion, not the reason. 광복절을 맞아 사면을 단행했습니다 says the pardon was timed to Liberation Day; what actually drove the decision is a separate question the sentence never answers, and press releases lean on this phrase precisely because it accounts for the date without accounting for the motive. Keep the occasion use apart, too, from the wider verb 맞다: 위기를 맞아 and 전환점을 맞아 have the same shape but name something nobody is celebrating. And 맞다 has unrelated homographs meaning to be correct and to be struck, so it is the noun in front that tells you which 맞다 you are looking at.
Similar grammar
- N을/를 앞두고
The pair that brackets a dated event. 맞아 treats the day as reached and puts the action on it; 앞두고 keeps the day ahead and puts the action in the run-up. A ministry can announce a plan 광복절을 앞두고 in the days before and hold the ceremony 광복절을 맞아 on the day, and the two sentences are not interchangeable.
- N을/를 계기로
Occasion against trigger. 맞아 takes a date that was always going to arrive and uses it to time something; 계기로 takes an event — often unplanned — and presents it as what set a change in motion. 사고를 계기로 규정이 강화됐습니다 claims the accident started something; putting 맞아 there would be odd, because an accident is not an occasion anyone greets.