Valentine's Day is badly timed. I'm still recovering from the Christmas frenzy, bank accounts depleted, credit cards over-deployed, there's a hell of a lot of work to catch up with, and it's expected to snow.
There's a steady diminution in the meaningfulness of holidays as the months progress. Thanksgiving is pretty cozy. Christmas has its moments, between paroxysms of stress. The worst holiday of all is Easter, completely deprived of significance except for small children. Valentine's Day isn't that bad, but it's still fairly rote. If one's life is infused with romance, then it's redundant. If one's life is a pit of loneliness, it's nauseating.
Valentine's Day is, however, a pretty big deal in Korea.
Maybe it's because courtships are somewhat more formalized, or because commercialization is still a comparatively new phenomenon. My impression, the year I taught there, was that it provided a way for people to overcome shyness or social restraints. And it's part of a more elaborate code of gift-giving, which can get to be expensive.
On Valentine's Day (or "Red Day") women offer candies or gifts to men; a month later, on "White Day", men return the favor. There's also a "Black Day", on which lonely people go to restaurants and eat Ja-Jang-Myun, noodles in black sauce. Some claim there's a "Yellow Day" for jealous people.
Neither Red or White Day, from what I saw, seemed to be strictly limited to the arena of romance; gifts and cards were also exchanged among good friends, relatives, co-workers. For English teachers, receipt of cards/presents was a not-so-subtle indication of classroom success. If you didn't come out of class with candies or chocolate, maybe a cassette tape or CD, or a pretty card featuring one or more popular English idioms ("from your beautiful friend," etc.), it was a sign one was following the wrong calling.
Here, Valentine's Day feels like a little nudge from Culture, reminding us of what we should be doing anyway – being considerate, sensitive and imaginative in our relationships. I figure these "secular holidays" are nostalgic sighs in the direction of community. They're better than "code orange" alerts, anyway.
1:55:17 PM 
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