Korean Funeral Traditional

Koreans held that if a person had succumbed to either illness or from natural causes outside the comforts of the home, the deceased spirit would roam aimlessly to eventually become a ghost or, kaekkwi. Korean funeral rites reveal a great deal about how Koreans view death, and in particular, how they cope with the death of a close family member.


Photo: asmythie

To ensure that their dead would not become wandering ghosts, family members took many precautions; among them, being present during the last moments of a dying relative was particularly important. Traditionally, funeral rites also adhered to strict Confucian norms delineating clear and fixed hierarchial lines between the genders. Korean families went to great lengths to transport the weak and the weary back to the comforts of their own homes when they felt that death was near or imminent.