Death, Mourning, and the Afterlife in Korea

1

Considerations on Death in the Korean Context

Michael J. Pettid and Charlotte Horlyck

You can know the next world only after you die.1

In the prime of his life, Prince Myŏngwŏn [1491–1563] became ill and died. After three days he awoke and told this story: At first my body was in great pain, but gradually that subsided and I was calm. Through a crack in the window I was able to go outside. There was a wide and end-

less desolate plain, but suddenly upon arriving at one spot I could hear the sound of a p’iri [flute] and a drum being struck. As I approached, a shaman bade me to come forward, but I hesitated; a gathering of ghosts rebuked me and said, “As a recently dead spirit, you are compelled to take part in these rites,” while blocking my return path. At the edge of the grounds I was offered several wraps of mixed rice and millet rolled in oak leaves. However, I was angry and refused to eat them. As such, I awoke and was living again. Prince Myŏngwŏn spoke to his children, “When one dies, the body is of no use whatsoever, and there is no need to build a strong grave with lime. However, spirits still can eat, so you must always hold ancestor rites with great diligence.”2

In reading the above narrative, recorded in an early seventeenth-century work called Ŏu yadam (於于野談 Unofficial narratives by Ŏu), what can we take of the worldviews and practical processes surrounding death in the early to middle Chosŏn period? There seems to be a clear acceptance of a life of some sort after death but also an idea that death does not sever relationships with the living. This narrative also reveals an understanding of death that does not necessarily fully conform to the ideas found in Confucian ideology and instead offers a much more syncretic view of life after death. Yet the final lines recall the importance of ancestor rites, a pillar of Confucian belief, and thus offer a didactic message to readers of the importance of honoring the dead. In short, the narrative is a blend of several ideas and practices associated with death and the next life, echoing multilayered perspectives and practical approaches to death that formed part of society in both premodern and modern Korea.

The very fact of the inevitability of death makes it an extremely important aspect of human life. We cannot avoid, no matter how we might try, the fate that all humans eventually experience. Yet the termination of bodily functioning is only one part of the specter surrounding death. Though modern medicine has brought into question how biological death may be defined, it can be argued that death is fixed in time and that it constitutes a permanent state.3 Interdisciplinary studies on death have, however, shown that physical death is only one stage in a temporal series of social reframings of the dead, who may transmute into a ghost, ancestor, benevolent spirit, or another mode of being that is continuously reappropriated by the living. The ways in which death is conceptualized and legitimized by the living constitutes several, often temporal, stages, including treatments of the body and construction of the burial site, as well as mourning and ancestral rites. Death socially reframes the living as it changes the relationships of the living with the living, and the living with the dead. As Robert Hertz noted over a century ago, the physiological phenomena are not the whole of death but are rather a part of a complex mass of beliefs, emotions, and activities that create a distinctive character.4

Treatments of the dead are not only driven by theoretical issues rooted in different worldviews but also prompted by practical considerations of a more universal nature. This is demonstrated by several published case studies from earlier and present-day societies around the world. Maurice Bloch’s research on the Merina people of Madagascar, for example, shows that funerary procedures consist, on the one hand, of practical concerns of how to deal with pollution and, on the other, of emotional concerns of how to overcome sorrow.5 The divergences of the logics of death and its associated panoply of practices are clearly infinite, and a core objective of this volume is to draw out the manifestations of different mortuary practices and understandings of death over time on the Korean Peninsula.

The crucial place of death in human existence is apparent from its integration into the rituals, customs, and beliefs of peoples around the globe. In the case of Korea, how were biological and social death reasoned with historically and how are they managed today? How have the different stages of death been interpreted over time, and how have they framed the lives of the living. How does the codependent relationship between the dead and living impact the ways in which the dead as well as the living move from one social identity to another? This volume seeks to provide insight into the complexities, ideology, and practices surrounding death in Korea, both historically and in the present age. The authors of the following chapters demonstrate the diverse means by which death has been understood and socially managed by the individual and the collective and, moreover, that the practices associated with funerals and burials have undergone a long period of evolution and change.

Extending Hertz’s notions about death, Robert Jay Lifton wrote that “man created both death and continuity.”6 While such an idea might initially seem implausible, if we look deeper into his reasoning, his stance becomes clear. For Lifton, death is a type of severance of the “self’s connections,” and the associated fear is reflected in attitudes toward the dead. The new relations between the living and the dead are marked by various rituals. Such practices reflect a “universal dilemma around ties to the dead: on the one hand the survivor’s need to embrace them, pay homage to them, and join in various rituals to perpetuate the relationship to them; on the other his tendency to push them away, to consider them tainted and unclean, dangerous and threatening.”7 Since the living have not experienced death and thus do not know about life after death, all matters, conceptions, and associations with the dead and their afterlife are created by the living. Indeed, as Lifton asserts, humans have fashioned all the trappings associated with death and the afterlife.

Turning to the history of the people living on and around the Korean Peninsula, we can note the same awe and fear of death and a correlating propensity for rituals to mark a death. The relations between the living and the dead are characterized by binary notions such as purity and contamination, separation and continuation, dread and reverence, and the known and the unknown that exist in a setting that can never be fixed but is fed by its constantly evolving social and emotional parameters. Such contradictory elements are brought into balance with elaborate rites surrounding the death, many of which help to alleviate fears and comfort the living. Others serve to usher the spirit of the dead to the next world or life, or from one transitional state of being to another. Consequently, we cannot write simply of burial rites. Instead these intricate practical and psychological processes encompass a broad range of activities, from the physical aspects of a death, such as preparing a burial site and the corpse, to such matters associated with a death as

honoring the dead, allowing space for grieving, and upholding social convictions about both life and death. Truly the ritual practices connected with death are some of the most complex in Korea, both historically and at present. For that reason one can understand much about life in general by investigating the practices surrounding death.

Thematic Concerns and Boundaries

Notwithstanding the tremendous importance that aspects related to death have held in Korea in both past and present times, there has not been a correspondingly large amount of scholarship that has sought to draw out and clarify these multifarious processes connected to death and their related ritual practices. If such a statement is true for works in the Korean language, it is certainly true for works in English. In recent years several substantial volumes in Korean have appeared aiming to fill this obvious gap in scholarly activity. Of particular interest to this study are the few recent works providing periodic descriptions of mortuary rites and practices throughout Korean history.8 The relative newness of these studies suggests that there is significant scholarly interest in death and the afterlife in Korea, and that such studies are opening new areas of research in Korea.

Regarding English-language studies, however, the scholarship on death in Korea lags significantly behind what we can find for China and Japan. For a Korean studies scholar this is hardly a surprise since there are many such areas where this difference exists: the field is simply not as mature as studies related to China or Japan. Yet there are important works in English that address death in part, particularly in a religious context.9 What is lacking, though, is a work examining specific aspects of mortuary rites at certain points in Korean history. Such a work would allow a more complete understanding of the cultural practices related to death at various moments in Korea’s history and also of how different worldviews have influenced understandings of death and the afterlife. Filling this void is an aim of the present volume.

A necessary first step in this first chapter is to define the scope of this study. The editors have decided upon using the term “mortuary rites” to cover all aspects of a death, ranging from the treatment of the body; the steps or ceremonies associated with preparation of clothing, the body, and the burial site; the rituals conducted by the living in memorial of the dead; as well as the burial of the body. Under this term are the subdivisions of “funerary rites” and “ancestor rites.” Funerary rites are concerned with all the events through the burial of the body, while ancestor rites are rituals conducted after the fact of the burial to honor the dead or solicit good fortune. Although the term “ancestor rites” might cause one to think only of the Confucian variety (cherye 祭禮), there are like practices in Buddhism, shamanism, and even Christianity. The authors in this volume have therefore taken care to be specific in their essays as to which type of rituals they are examining.

One question for all the contributors to this volume, especially related to the premodern period, was how to approach these mortuary rites. We can cite four means for doing so:

1. Direct observation of or participation in the rituals

2. Verbal testimony, oral or written, describing or explaining

3. Artistic representations of the rituals

4. The material remains of the rituals10

Obviously the first method is not possible for the premodern period, but a combination of the next three approaches allows us to approximate what might have been orthopraxy for mortuary rites in a given period. Moreover, by using a wide range of materials, the authors in this volume are not writing of a single example in a manner to extend that event’s meaning to all other events. Thus our approach has been designed to utilize as many sources as possible to determine what the shape of mortuary rites might have been for a diverse group of people in various ages.

In keeping with the vast array of practices bonded with death in general and specifically mortuary rites, this volume has chapters written from a broad spectrum of disciplines, including history, literature, anthropology, and archaeology. There is not a single discipline that captures all aspects of mortuary procedures, just as there is not a single manner in which death has been treated. The editors hope that this multidisciplinary approach to how death has been dealt with in practical, religious, and emotional terms will enable a clearer understanding of how people comprehended death and also reveal that there have been multiple ways of understanding mortuary practices.

Nearly every social practice or custom permits multiple understandings depending upon who is describing or viewing the practice. We assert that the notion of multivalence is of utmost importance in understanding any social act, since comprehension of the activity depends greatly on a host of factors, including life experience, gender, social status, and worldview of the participant or observer. Nonetheless, there are also strong ideological currents that shape customs and rites. In premodern Korea these were most certainly manifested in the shape of shamanic, Buddhist, and Confucian practices that in their various permutations over time and space have offered a “technology of the dead” ranging typically from pragmatic guidance on disposing of the dead to theological instruction on how to understand life after death. To this amalgam, in the modern period we can add the Christian worldview, scientific understandings of the biological processes of death, and psychological explanations of how mourning or loss affects the living. It should be noted that we do not construe these worldviews as different entities within rigidly structured parallel “belief systems” but understand them as historical heterologies that informed mortuary practices at different times or often simultaneously. Thus we see them as existing in symbiotic relationships that are always interdependent and in flux. Moreover, worldviews are not static in themselves but are subject to change, and this impacts the ways in which death and the dead are dealt with in practical and theological terms over time.

Returning for a moment to the opening narrative, let us consider the ideological milieu in which the narrative was created. First, we can note the presence of a shamanic or Buddhist worldview in which otherworldly beings and mediators, in this case a shaman, interact. The narrative reveals a belief that death is not a final event but rather one of transformation to another level of existence. Such a worldview is also seen in religions entering Korea in the late eighteenth century and beyond, such as Christianity. Along with the idea that there is an afterlife, we also find the notion of the need to honor or serve the spirits of the dead. While the context of that concept is decidedly Confucian in the narrative, the reality is that we can also find the same belief in shamanic and Buddhist practices in premodern Korea, and in present-day observations surrounding death. Thus it is clear that attempting to delineate ritual practices associated with mortuary rites is a veritable minefield of contradictions and overlapping worldviews.

The fact is that ritual participants were often oblivious to distinctions between various worldviews in both past and present times. Though participants in rituals need not have fully understood these sometimes complex belief systems, this is not to argue that the systems and a complex understanding of death, rites, and the afterlife did not exist. It seems inarguable that throughout the history of Korea and until the present day there are basic ideas or beliefs that cut across social classes, gender, and economic wherewithal and that have influenced or continue to influence how death is perceived. What, then, are these beliefs?

The first area that we should consider is the group of beliefs constituting the shamanic worldview or popular folk practices. Whereas this worldview is not as structured, at least in terms of a written doctrine, as Buddhism or Confucianism, for centuries it was the primary means of understanding the cosmos and the cycle of human life and death. In premodern times the beliefs of shamanism intermingled with both Buddhism and Confucianism to create hybrid rituals that featured aspects

of all three belief systems; it can be argued that in the modern era some Christian mortuary practices continue to contain shamanic features.11 One cannot state definitively where shamanic beliefs stop and Buddhist or Confucian beliefs begin. What we can note here is the syncretic nature of religious worldviews in premodern Korea and its clear manifestation in mortuary rites.

The second belief system we must consider for a fuller understanding of funerary rites is Buddhism. Although Buddhism entered the Korean Peninsula in the fourth century CE, its influence was initially confined to the uppermost reaches of society. Yet as the centuries passed, concepts of Buddhist purity and impermanence became pronounced as did physical practices associated with mortuary rites such as cremation, Buddhist masses, and chanting of or publishing sutras in honor of the dead. In the Chosŏn period, many Buddhist practices were the subject of criticism by Confucian lawmakers, and some observances, such as cremation, were prohibited outright. Nonetheless, despite the many clashes between Buddhist custom and the newly implemented Confucian rituals, we can note that many Buddhist practices continued to thrive in Chosŏn and were supported by those of the highest social status.

The third main belief system is Confucianism. Like Buddhism, Confucianism entered the Korean Peninsula in the fourth century, but its influence in cultural practices took an even longer time to manifest. Yet as various Confucian norms became increasingly common among the uppermost status groups in Koryŏ, gradual and ongoing change in various customs, including those associated with funerals, became apparent from the late Koryŏ period forward. There was certainly a strong push by the late Koryŏ to re-create various social institutions and customs in a manner reflecting the ideals of the Sung-dynasty teachings of Neo-Confucianism, and this did lead to heavy criticism of Buddhist and shamanic practices.12 However, it would be incorrect to say that there was a full “Confucian transformation” of customs in Chosŏn. Despite public criticism, shamanic and Buddhist customs continued to have great influence throughout the ensuing five centuries of Chosŏn, and this persistence can be seen in every social group and region.

A discussion of geomancy also has to be included here, since in the case of Korea it has had a significant and enduring influence on the practical and emotional aspects of death. The geomantic impact on Korean mortuary practices lies especially in the selection of burial sites and marks the interdependent connection between the dead and the collective. Since at least the Greater Silla period, grave locations were chosen according to geomantic readings of the landscape, and in this

way geomancy offered practical guidance of how to dispose of the dead. But more important, in the very act of selecting a propitious site an enduring link is established between the dead and the living, creating a relationship characterized by mutual dependency. If the grave site is inauspicious, the dead will be unable to rest in peace, and the living will suffer in moral and practical ways. The fortunes of the family, or even rulership, may be impaired, and it is therefore in the interest of all parties that the best possible location be chosen. In other worldviews, such as Confucianism, the establishment of enduring bonds between the dead and the living may be interpreted as an act of filial piety and signifies the blurring of boundaries between different practices and technological approaches to death.

We can note the blending and syncretism between these worldviews in various aspects of mortuary rites, but perhaps nowhere as clearly as in the existence of an afterlife or continuing relationship between the living and the dead. An understanding that there is some sort of afterlife seems almost a universal cultural belief. The polar opposites of life and death seem to rise at every major event in life, from the moment of birth to the physical death. Bronislaw Malinowski has written that “Death and its denial—Immortality—have always formed, as they form today, the most poignant theme of man’s foreboding.”13 Building upon such an understanding, Lifton has argued that humans “require a symbolization of continuity—imaginative forms of transcending death—in order to confront genuinely the fact that we die.”14 It is this quest for validation that our lives do not simply end with our physical bodies that drives much of human knowledge and activities in areas such as religion, history, science, and even cultural and social relations. On the pursuit for immortality, Lifton continues:

It is a corollary of the knowledge of death itself, and reflects a compelling and universal inner quest for continuous symbolic relationship to what has gone before and what will continue after our finite lives. That quest is central to the human project, to man as a cultural animal and to his

creation of history and culture.15

It is therefore fitting that we should closely examine the beliefs in the next life to fully understand the culture of the present.

For all of East Asia, and Korea in particular, the Confucian notion of filial piety best represents the importance of this quest for immortality. Filial piety is the extension of life; that is, it is a means to keep alive a memory of the deceased, continue a relationship that has physically ceased, and culturally demonstrate that life does not end with a physical death. The Liji (禮記 Book of rites) states.

The filial piety taught by the ancient kings required that the eyes of the son should not forget the looks [of his parents], nor his ears their voices. Moreover, that he should not forget their aspirations and likings. As he gives fully his love, in his heart they live again, and for his reverence, they seem to stand before him again. Thus, with them again standing before him and dwelling in his heart, how can rites be without the feeling of reverence?16

This notion is not, however, merely a Confucian one in the Korean context. In both shamanism and Buddhism there is similar emphasis on honoring the dead. Shamanism acknowledges the dead as being important influences on the living, and concepts of vengeful ghosts and beneficial ancestors are a manifestation of this belief. Also observable are the dozens of rituals associated with the dead in shamanic beliefs.17 In the Buddhist frame, the cosmos is a part of the larger notion of samsara, the cycle of birth and death that continues until one is able to enter Nirvana. Aside from the metaphysics of Buddhism, however, in practice Buddhist masses offered for the dead seek to ensure the favorable treatment of the dead when judged in the underworld and also the transfer of merit from the living to the dead. Certainly such a reverence for one’s ancestors is not absent in the Christian traditions that entered Korea in the eighteenth Christianity, in the form of the Catholic religion, first became known to Koreans in the early part of the seventeenth century. Confucian thinkers of that age were quick to condemn Catholicism as heterodoxy since they believed its teachings would hinder the promotion of Confucian morality.18 In practice, however, Confucian lawmakers did not persecute individuals for having heterodox personal beliefs unless those beliefs challenged or undermined Confucian standards of morality. The chief conflict between Confucianism and Catholicism arose in connection with the observance of ancestor rites, a practice of paramount essentiality to Confucianism but one disallowed by Catholics as a result of a papal bull issued in 1742 against the practice.

In the context of this volume, it is notable that one of the initial points of conflict between Confucian societal norms and Catholicism is found in mortuary rites. While Confucian lawmakers of Chosŏn thought the Western religion was simply barbaric for barring ancestor rites, the Catholic, and later Protestant, criticisms of religious practices in Chosŏn were equally dismissive and unbending. One need only examine the writings of early twentieth-century Western visitors to Chosŏn to see the level of contempt that they held for the practices surrounding death and the worldviews prevalent at the time, as in the following observations by a late nineteenth-century visitor to Korea:

Korean cities without priests or temples; houses without “god shelves,” . . . marriage and burial without priestly blessing; an absence of religious ceremonials and sacred books and nothing to show that religion has any hold on the popular mind, constitute a singular Korean characteristic.19

Yet despite such criticism, toward the end of Chosŏn when religious freedom was enforced in Korea through treaties with Western countries, there occurred a mingling of Catholicism with long-standing Korean practices. One area where this is notable is the gathering of family and friends to pray for the souls of the deceased in a practice known as yŏndo (prayer for souls in purgatory). Such prayer gatherings are held after the funeral, and especially on the third, seventh, forty-ninth, and hundredth days after the death.20 These days are highly auspicious in traditional Korean culture and match the days when shamanic or Buddhist rites were held for the recently deceased. We can thus see an accommodating movement of Catholicism toward the established practices surrounding mortuary rites.

Protestantism had perhaps a harder line toward ancestor worship in particular than did Catholicism. Yet within a few years of the advent of missionaries in Chosŏn in the mid-1880s, Protestants found a means to modify rites held on behalf of the dead to be somewhat in accord with both Christian and Confucian practices. These rites were held on the anniversary of a death (matching the Confucian, Buddhist, and shamanic practices) and were known as either ki’il yebae (death-date rite) or ch’udo yebae (grieving rite). The ki’il yebae is in particular an answer for perhaps the most important of the Confucian ancestor rites, the ki’il che (death-date rite), which was held to mark the anniversary of a death in the Confucian tradition. By the late nineteenth century, the Protestant version of this rite featured prayers to God on behalf of the deceased, hymns, testimonies to the faith of the deceased, and lamentations of the death.21 This again demonstrates that despite a huge gulf in how the disparate doctrines of Christianity and Confucianism viewed the dead, the afterlife, and the relationship of the dead to the living, the practitioners of the Christian worldview managed to find a shard of common ground where they could honor the dead in accordance with the conventions of Korea.

The introduction of scientific medicine from the West to Chosŏn in the late nineteenth century also had a tremendous influence on aspects of death. The new scientific understandings of the body and death resulted in conflicts with long-standing practices. This conflict also occurred in England a century earlier when the dissecting of human bodies required for the study of anatomy clashed with Christian ideas concerning the eventual resurrection of the body.22 If such treatment of the dead was anathema to Christians, it was even more repulsive to a Confucian society that viewed the body as a precious gift bequeathed by one’s parents that should never be violated. Nonetheless, change was legislated and enforced by the legal code promulgated by the Japanese colonial government in the early twentieth century, in relation especially to shamanic practices surrounding the dead. The action was taken in the name of modernization, science, and public hygiene, and shamans who violated the new code were subject to criminal prosecution.23 While this push, supposedly aimed at modernization, was carried out most visibly against shamanic practices, many long-standing practices were affected as Western science began to supplant previous customs related to death.

In Korea of the twenty-first century all the mentioned practices still have great social significance in funerary rites. While there are undoubtedly many who practice a single worldview (and condemn other practices as superstition or heterodoxy), it is easy to see the great deal of overlap and borrowing among the newer and older traditions. Joon-sik Choi, for example, writes of the many commonalities between shamanic practices and those of the Protestant churches in Korea, particularly related to seeking divine assistance.24 It is easy to see that even in present-day Korea, terms like “multivalence” and “syncretism” must be used to adequately describe mortuary customs.

In establishing the scope of our study, we have not attempted to write of every aspect, practice, or custom associated with death in the premodern or modern periods. Such an attempt would be unworkable. In the current period practices related to death are dynamic and continually evolving into new practices, and moreover, this period has spawned a milieu of diverse custom and hybridity; for the historical period one could never write of the practices of all the people. We can examine mainstream and dominant practices, customs that have been recorded in historic documents, and events reflected in artifacts or remains. However, we cannot know of what has not been preserved, not recorded, and what might have been practiced by a very few people. Thus, as in any history, we are limited by what has been preserved or otherwise transmitted to the present age.

Organization of the Volume

Since our key objective has been to draw out commonalities, disparities, and changes in the ways in which death was dealt with at different times by different groups of people, the historical periods covered in this volume range from the Greater Silla Kingdom to the twentieth century. Moreover, we have purposely not intended to compile a singular, congruent account of premodern and modern mortuary practices on the Korean Peninsula. Rather, we have aimed to highlight the inherent inconsistencies that typically exist in any events and actions that are linked to death since we believe they are not only driven by ritualized behavior of the collective but also very much rooted in individual emotions and actions. A case in point is that discussed by Michael Pettid in “Shamanic Rites for the Dead in Chosŏn Korea,” in which he pinpoints the continual failure of Chosŏn officials to curb shamans’ involvement in the conduct of funerals and ancestral rituals and the difficulties the elite faced in ensuring that rites were performed according to Zhu Xi’s (1130–1200) Family Rituals (Jiali 家禮).

The following chapters relate to one or more of the following four themes: treatments of the dead body; disposal of the bodily remains; mortuary rites and ancestor worship; and the dead as perceived by the living. They encapsulate the sequential events and actions that underline any mortuary behavior from the time of death to the disposal of the body and the performance of ancestral rites. A final stage is peopled by the undead, who are traditionally thought to drift between the world of the dead and that of the living when death and the stages that follow it have not happened in appropriate ways. Because of the nature and the availability of the source materials, it is not possible to approach each of these subject areas in similar ways, nor is it our intention to do so. Rather, through discussions of selected material and case studies, the individual contributors focus on what they believe are key characteristics and core issues related to one or more of the above topics.

Cross-cultural studies on mortuary practices demonstrate that they tend to change little over time. Though the essence of any ritual lies in its resistance to change, this is particularly the case with mortuary rites, which tend to be the most conservative of all. Since it is in their preservation of long-held traditions that rituals provide comfort to the individual as well as the collective, their role is especially pertinent at times of death, when society undergoes severe upheaval. This is also the case on the Korean Peninsula, which saw the continuation of certain mortuary beliefs and customs despite the fall of rulers and the rise of new ideological practices. This is brought home in the first two chapters of the volume, which explore ways in which bodies of the dying and the dead were dealt with. Spanning the Greater Silla Kingdom to the mid-twentieth century, the rituals and actions discussed in the chapters have much in common despite the significant shifts in official ritual policies and religious traditions.

In exploring the Buddhist impact on early mortuary rituals, Sem Vermeersch sheds light on a widely misinterpreted aspect of Korea’s premodern history. As Buddhism grew in its impact on the ruling powers of the peninsula, Buddhist beliefs and customs came to affect many aspects of society, including the ways in which death was dealt with. This has led to the common perception that Buddhism significantly impacted death rituals. In his examination of Greater Silla and Koryŏ cremation practices, Vermeersch presents an altogether different picture. Drawing largely on historical records such as the Samguk sagi (三國史記 History of the Three Kingdoms), the Samguk yusa (三國遺事 Memorabilia of the Three Kingdoms), and the Koryŏsa (高麗史 History of Koryŏ), he argues that though cremation may have been widespread among common people from the seventh century onward, it did not become customary among the clergy until the mid-eleventh century. Even in the Koryŏ period, when Buddhism dominated, cremation never became commonplace. Vermeersch argues that the reason behind this may be rooted in traditional beliefs that emphasized the importance of preserving bones to ensure passage to the afterlife.

Treatments of the body are explored in a more contemporary setting by John DiMoia in his discussion of new forms of health care that were introduced in the aftermath of the Korean War (1950–1953), focusing in particular on the Minnesota Project, which was launched in 1956. Con-

ducted between the University of Minnesota and Seoul National University in the areas of medicine, agriculture, and engineering, its program of faculty exchange and rehabilitation brought a shift from German research traditions favored by Japanese medics of the colonial period to American procedures. It led to significant and lasting changes in terms of how the dying and the dead were cared for in hospitals as different ways of dealing with the human body in death came to be applied. The move also caused a major shift in mortuary practices as funerals were increasingly staged at hospitals in halls designed especially for this purpose. In this way, the Minnesota Project not only initiated new methods of managing the dying and the dead in the medical profession but also brought about a reshaping of funerary customs.

The second topic explored in the volume concerns the disposal of bodily remains. Drawing on material from the Koryŏ dynasty and the twentieth century, it includes discussion of cemeteries and memorial monuments. The rapid industrialization of South Korea and the numerous construction projects that have followed in its wake have led to a large number of archaeological sites being discovered and unearthed on the peninsula, including hundreds of graves from Koryŏ. Since extant historical records provide little insight into Koryŏ mortuary practices, such excavated material has been instrumental in offering a more detailed picture of how people were buried at this time. Focusing on constructions of graves, their locations, and their funerary goods, Charlotte Horlyck investigates how the dead were disposed of over the course of the tenth to fourteenth centuries. Horlyck argues that in Koryŏ times there was not a single, uniform way of interment that was seen to be “best practice.” Rather, it was the individual circumstances of the deceased and in particular those of descendants, chiefly their social status and religious beliefs, that significantly impacted ways of burial.

Guy Podoler’s chapter on the Seoul National Cemetery places questions of disposal in a modern paradigm. Through explorations of the setup and layout of the site, he discusses how postcolonial national narratives play out against the traditional backdrop of a burial ground. As the remains of South Korean soldiers, policemen, selected government members, and other deserving servicemen and women, the bodies of the dead in this national cemetery are argued to be connotative of a preordained national text that reinforces the legitimacy of the South Korean state of the past and present. The cemetery is thus explored as a visual signifier of an official master narrative on which the foundations and continuing survival of the state rests. Since this appropriation of history leaves little space for contested voices of the past, Podoler also highlights the conspicuous absence in the cemetery of civilians who lost their lives in the struggle for democracy.

Explored in part 3 are ancestral rites and ancestor worship, which have formed an inseparable part of Korean mortuary customs since premodern times. It is commonly believed that the significance of ancestor rites lies in Confucian ways of thought, but as Michael Pettid states, they feature in shaman traditions too. Though the syncretic nature of religious thought and practices on the Korean Peninsula makes any clear separation of Confucian, shaman, and Buddhist worldviews tenuous, shamanic death rituals aimed at appeasing the spirits of the dead filled an important emotional gap for Chosŏn people. In examining the specific components of shamanic funerary rites, such as cleansing the living of the influence of the dead, the treatment of the corpse, and sending the spirit of the dead to the next world, Pettid details the motivations behind such rituals and explains how they were carried out. Particular attention is given to the Chinogwi Kut, one of the most representative of shamanic death rites. Normally performed only in the case of a “bad” death, it offers the spirit of the dead a chance to air its grievances, and it was believed

that doing so restored harmony among the living and the dead.

Milan Hejtmanek also addresses the need to appease the dead, although in a Neo-Confucian context. In the Chosŏn dynasty heightened notions of piety required male members of yangban (upper-status elites) families to frequently conduct rituals for departed ancestors. While such interactions with the dead were not always welcomed by the individual, social laws rooted in Confucian thought and ritual texts prescribed that matters such as selections of grave sites, disposals, and reburials were to be carried out with utmost sincerity. But it was especially in the performance of ancestral rites (chesa 祭祀) that bonds between the living and the dead were reinforced and that the dead came to occupy a continuous presence among the living. This interdependence between the yangban literati and their ancestors was unprecedented on the peninsula, and using contemporary diaries, letters, court records, and literary accounts from the Chosŏn period, Hejtmanek identifies shifting notions in interactions between the worlds of the living and the dead.

This relationship is further explored in the fourth and final part, which addresses the treatment of the dead and how the state of death was perceived. From a cross-cultural perspective, some of the most tangible, yet contested, links between the living and the dead are in the form of ghosts, and the Korean Peninsula is no exception. There are many accounts in the literature of the Koryŏ and Chosŏn periods featuring encounters with ghosts or beings from beyond the human world. Although these accounts are sometimes humorous or frightening, their more important value is the insight they offer into how the peoples of these times understood death and the afterlife. In highlighting the continuous presence of the dead among the living, Michael Pettid argues that ghosts were not only to be feared but also served a practical didactic role in society, and these ghost stories provide important insight into how death was interpreted by common people.

Gregory Evon investigates nonconformist narratives of death in Chosŏn literary works through a discussion of fictional and biographical writings by the seventeenth-century yangban official Kim Man-jung (1637–1692). Focusing on Kim’s romantic novel Kuunmong (九雲夢 A nine cloud dream), which tells of a young Buddhist monk who dreams that he is reborn to meet and marry eight women in succession, Evon juxtaposes its religious and philosophical views with those represented in Kim’s biographical account Sŏp’o yŏnbo (西浦年譜 Biographical chro-

nology of Sŏp’o). Kuunmong is exceptional in its prevailing references to death and rebirth at a time when such a Buddhist stance was in clear conflict with official Neo-Confucian doctrine. Yet they reflect well Kim Man-jung’s own worldviews. As Evon argues, in its distinct departure from prevailing official interpretations of death, Kuunmong stands as an enigma particularly because it was written by the hand of a member of the Chosŏn establishment. However, it seems that for Kim Man-jung, at least, it was in Buddhist thought and practices that solace in death could be found.

Keeping with unendorsed views on death, the final chapter, by Franklin Rausch, questions how death and the afterlife were understood by early Korean Catholics of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Catholicism was forbidden by the state until 1886, when a treaty between France and Korea put a stop to violent state persecutions. Until then, the thousands of Korean Catholics, men as well as women, who died as martyrs led believers to seek an understanding of martyrdom in traditional perceptions of death and the afterlife. As the Catholic Church’s initial prohibition of Confucian ancestor worship forced different means of upholding family bonds, martyrdom itself came to be seen as the ultimate act of filial piety.

We hope that this volume will fill a significant gap in studies on Korean as well as East Asian mortuary practices. Since Jan Jacob Maria de Groot’s late nineteenth-century research on funeral customs in China, much work has been done on this and related topics.25 From the 1990s onward this has been followed by examinations of Japanese approaches to death and disposal, but not until the twenty-first century has interest in Korean mortuary customs begun to develop. Our objective here is consequently twofold: this volume will not only provide insight into how death was dealt with on the peninsula but also offer a comparative platform from which East Asian approaches to death and disposal can be viewed.

Notes

1 A Korean proverb: Chugŏ poaya chŏsŭng ŭl alchi (죽어 보아야 저승을 알지).

3 For a discussion of biomedical approaches to the definition of death, see,

for example, Kastenbaum, Death, Society, 39–44. Whereas several studies

have explored technologically manipulated death in America and Japan,

few have explored the different articulations of biological death in Korean

society. Moreover, in the case of Korea, the perspective is largely juridical.

See, for example, Kim Hŏn-jin, “Haengjŏng kŏmsi chedo.” See also Lock,

“Death in Technological Time.”

4 Hertz, Death and the Right Hand, 27.

5 Bloch, “Death, Women and Power.”

6 Lifton, Broken Connection, 92.

8 Three recent works that provide such coverage are Yi Ŭn-bong, Han’gu-

gin ŭi chugŭm kwan; Kuksa P’yŏnch’an Wiwŏnhoe, Sangjangnye; and

Pak T’ae-ho, Changnye ŭi yŏksa. Of course there are dozens of journal

articles that provide close inspections of various practices in specific pe-

9 The following are such important works: Baker, Korean Spirituality; Bus-

well, Religions of Korea; Kendall, Shamans, Housewives; Janelli and Janelli,

11 The same mingling of worldviews has been noted for China as well and

given as the reason for the Neo-Confucian philosophical attack on Bud-

dhism and Taoism as it sought to replace those practices with orthodox

Confucian rites. See Rawski, “Historian’s Approach,” 30.

12 Much has been written on this aspect of the transition from the Koryŏ to

Chosŏn. See Deuchler, Confucian Transformation of Korea.

13 Malinowski, “Magic, Science and Religion,” 19.

17 Kuksa P’yŏnch’an Wiwŏnhoe, Sangjangnye, 18.

19 Bishop, Korea and Her Neighbours, 399.

20 Inshil Choe Yoon, “Martyrdom and Social Activism,” 364.

22 Kerrigan, History of Death, 147–148.

23 Do-hyun Han, “Shamanism, Superstition.”

24 Joon-sik Choi, Folk-religion, 50–54.

25 Groot, Religious System of China