HEADLINE NEWS - Mock Funerals hit Koreans

Saturday was a very relaxing day. It all started off with a solitary trip to the bookstore. It’s quite an impressive bookstore – like any other impressive book store it has many levels comprising of many different genre of book. After this I went to buy some running trainers. One of my resolutions is to go to the gym more, so buying some trainers adds more substance to the resolution.

It was now about 3pm and I headed to meet up with Giovanna (Italian, English), Dan (Welsh), Kiri (Kiwi) and Rachel (Kiwi). I felt the need to introduce their nationalities to you – no reason. We had a rather pleasant lunch with some enlightening conversation. One conversation I feel I should share with you all. I was browsing the ‘The Korean Herald’ newspaper and found an article titled ‘Mock funerals in pursuit of better lives’.

Basically a new fad in Korea is to stage your own funeral, and once the mock funeral is finished you are supposed to have a better mind set to carry out your remaining years. They do this by getting into a real life coffin and having it secured by nails in the usual fashion and then they are left there for 30 minutes or so. In this time people are supposed to reflect on their lives and think about certain aspects of their lives that have a big impact on them. One person said “I felt really, really scared inside the coffin and thought a lot about my mom. I’ll live differently from now on so as not to have any regrets in my life”. This all seems a bit strange to me………..However, Chung Jaehyun, a board director at the Korean association of Thanatology, that study death related issues, is magnificently quoted as saying “Real death is totally different than this”. Oh!

I will leave you to think about the power of that quote.

The pictures are of a section of Seoul’s skyline at night.