Weird Trends: Fake Funerals Boom in South Korea. Why?

Life lessons can be different… Some people prefer stepping on their own rake, some prefer learning from others. Anyway, Europeans are used to pieces of training, seminars, conferences, but not to what South Koreans do. 

They fake FUNERALS!

You’ve read that right. People pay money to take part in own funerals. More than 25K South Koreans have taken part in fake funerals since 2012. This strange representation is held at Hyowon Healing Center that promises to improve people’s life after the experience of their death.

The Cognitive Dissonance

We all know about the differences between Eastern and Western cultures. Asian cultures seem unusual to us as if they came from another world. A doctor at Asan Center, Yu Eun-sil, said that it’s crucial to keep death in mind and prepare for it from a young age. He has even written a book about death and the public considers it absolutely normal. You can now see, while we have nightmares about the day we’ll meet with God, Asians treat that normally. We all lack a bit of this Confucian wisdom and damn, we MUST learn from their experience! Why?

Here’s how a 75-old lady Cho Jae-hee commented on her fake funerals which were part of the program called ‘Dying well’: “When you become conscious of death and experience it, you get a new approach to life’.

Makes sense, ha?

Still, would you like to invite your friends and relatives to your fake funerals? It still seems insane! 

What Are These Fake Funerals Like?

No matter how old you are, both teenagers, adults, and retirees participate in the fake funerals event. They take portraits, write last wills and next, spend around 10 minutes in CLOSED coffins.

For example, one of the students confessed that 10 minutes in a coffin revealed that he has been perceiving others as competitors. His attitude to people and the environment has changed.

Another 28-year man from South Korea said that this fake funeral helped him decide on his own business, though he was planning to work at a company on a competitive job market.

Why Is This So Popular?

We tried to analyze what’s the fuck with all those people and what reasons drive their decisions.

South Korea is 33d out of forty countries with the ‘Better Life’ index. Youngsters have high hopes for their future and dream a lot when studying. Nevertheless, their dreams are destroyed by an enormous wrecking machine called ‘a real-life’. Joblessness, cooling economy and other problems make people feel unsatisfied and unhappy…

The World Health Organization stated that the suicide rate in South Korea overcame the 20.2 per 100K residents line in 2016, and the global average was twice as less that year. 

Maybe this was just for hype or business (sure, if fake funerals didn’t bring business owners millions, no one would even start this!), still, the Hyowon fake funeral company declares that their mission is providing people with a chance to love their lives again, to reconcile with relatives and friends, to treat their future more optimistically. 

Jeong Yong-mun, the head of Hyowon, drew an example when relatives meet each other only on sad occasions and don’t tell their loved ones about their feelings as often as they deserve. “We don’t have forever”  and he’s so fucking right!

Your keyboard might be drowned in tears before you read the last sentence said by Jeong for this article:

— “I’d like to let people know they really matter and others would be very sad if they were gone forever.” 

He spoke to hundreds of South Koreans who were going to commit suicides but didn’t, thanks to fake funerals – so much strange yet effective event. 

Well, to draw a bottom line, we’d like to note that you shouldn’t google ‘fake funerals in my city’ right after reading this piece of news. Just call your mom, dad, siblings, your friends and tell them how much they mean to you. But be careful! They might consider you have some suicidal thoughts! 🙂