Korean Funerals

This weekend, a member of the high school staff's wife died after a 10 year battle with cancer.  Dionne and I have worked with Mario, so we thought it would be appropriate to venture to the hospital in Seoul where the funeral was being held.  I felt like it was a rare opportunity to look deep into Korean culture, so I'd be lying if I said I wasn't interested in observing how Koreans honor their loved ones.  It was surprisingly similar to what we're used to in Iowa.

Instead of having a visitation and a funeral, they have a visiting period of three days.  So, imagine a three day visitation.  Christian funerals are held on a special floor in the hospital where they died.  We walked into the basement of the hospital and found the room where we needed to be.  Outside the room were huge floral wreaths with messages printed on huge ribbons hanging from the wreaths.  We removed our shoes and were instructed to sign our names in the guest book.  Next, we were handed single white flowers with a black ribbon tied around the stem and shown into an empty room with a wooden alter.  Because they do not view the body, a picture of Mario's wife was on the alter.  We placed our flowers on a pile of others' flowers.  Then, we stepped back and prayed.  Once we were finished with our prayer, we greeted Mario and two of his wife's brothers.  The whole situation lasted maybe two minutes.  There were no long winding lines like American visitations, possibly because we were there at 8 pm, or maybe because the body lays in wait for three days instead of two or three hours, giving people much more time to pay their respects.  There is no church service like we would have in the U.S.  After the three days have passed, the body gets buried in the family burial plot which are often in the mountains because they are still considered sacred land.

Next, we were ushered through a hallway and into a fellowship room with about 12 long tables set up with sporadic groups of Koreans dressed mostly in black eating.  If we hadn't eaten kimbap on the bus ride to Seoul, we would have been fed a huge Korean meal with all of the trimmings.  Instead, we munched on fried vegetables, cherry tomatoes, oranges and mixed nuts as we talked and observed those around us.  We stayed for about half an hour.  When we got up to leave, we went to the table where the administration from two of the Kyunghwa schools were sitting to say goodbye to Principal Suh.  She was so concerned about how we would get home and offered to drive us to the bus station!  We assured her that we would be fine.  As we walked out and said goodbye to Mario, he was also concerned about us getting home.  Once we convinced him that we would be able to catch a bus, he thanked us again for coming.  Then his nephew retrieved our shoes and we were on our way.

As I write this, I am struggling with what to say about the experience.  So many things about the experience were very indicative of Korean culture, but also very similar to the funeral practices I have experienced in the U.S.  I am continually blown away by how two cultures so far apart, and so different on the surface, can be so similar in the strangest ways.  But, just as I marvel at those similarities, I marvel at the big differences too.  Today during lunch, we were talking about the funeral and Toni told us that single, engaged or pregnant women do not traditionally attend funerals.  I don't really understand why, but this is still practiced!  One of the teachers at the high school is pregnant and when she tried to arrange going to the funeral, other teachers wouldn't let her go!  I guess the things that are different are REALLY different...