I spent last week in Seoul, writing a story about the current cultural fashionability of all things Korean. One of the things that struck me was how – despite the city being at the sharp edge of digital futures – ritual and family still seemed at the heart of so many aspects of life. At the end of my trip, Sae-jin, my brilliant guide in all things Seoul, gave me a lift to the airport on his way to a funeral, and we got talking about the way of death in our respective countries.
The funeral he was attending, for the father of a colleague, lasted for three days between news of the man’s demise and the committal. In that time, the mourning family had an open house and friends and relatives were required to drop in and share a drink and a meal and some memories of the deceased. The idea, Sae-jin, suggested, was to keep the family busily distracted from the finality of their loss, to remind them that death was part of life and that life went on.
