SEOUL: Anyone who has attended a funeral hall in South Korea will recognise how similar most of them look.
After a brief visit to the room with the altar to pay their respects, mourners move into a much larger adjoining reception area, where they linger over food and drinks.
The space stays open around the clock until the funeral concludes, usually lasting two to three days. During this time, acquaintances of the dead and the bereaved family come together to honour the departed, while also catching up over meals and sometimes drinks, with guests offering condolence money.
Many South Koreans believe it is their duty to stay as long as possible, out of concern that an empty room would deepen the family’s grief. A crowded mourning hall, lined with condolence wreaths sent by well-known figures, is also seen as a way of preserving the family’s social standing.
But this longstanding custom is beginning to change.
As family sizes shrink and social relationships become more individualised, the number of mourners has steadily declined. At the same time, rising funeral hall rental and hosting costs are prompting more South Koreans to move away from highly perfunctory, expensive funeral rites towards quieter, more private forms of remembrance.
Grieving in private
Chang, 42, recently lost his grandmother, who was in her 90s. Most of her friends and relatives had already died. With fewer visitors to receive, the family decided on a no-viewing funeral, through which they shared their grief and memories more fully.
After the funeral, Chang’s father contacted several acquaintances to inform them of her death. Some reacted with bewilderment or even resentment, asking why they had not been given a final chance to say goodbye.
“I found it difficult to understand their anger, given that they had not visited my grandmother during the many years she was alive,” he said.
Kim Hye-ryeon, 37, a web design freelancer, lost her father a year ago after many years of living with cancer. While his death was painful, the financial burden of the funeral weighed heavily on her.
Her parents had divorced several years earlier, and she was an only child. She supported herself as a freelancer and was unmarried.
A standard three-day funeral can cost up to 20 million won (US$13,786). She estimated that condolence money from elderly relatives in rural areas where her father lived would amount to no more than one to two million won.
“I worried that relatives and acquaintances would criticise me as unfilial for holding a no-viewing funeral, but I had no realistic alternative,” she said.
By choosing not to invite mourners, her father’s funeral cost her a total of two million won, about one million won for the funeral hall she still rented for him, and another one million won for a columbarium.
Funeral service providers estimate that the average cost of a traditional funeral is around 20 million won, based on 150 mourners. By contrast, a no-viewing funeral typically costs between two and three million won.
A no-viewing funeral omits the reception of mourners but still follows essential procedures such as laying the body to rest, encoffining and the funeral procession, usually conducted as a one-day ceremony.
Growing trend
Park Min-jeong, a 33-year-old researcher at a non-governmental agency, believes South Korea’s funeral culture fixed on receiving mourners is completely out of step with modern life.
“Families don’t even have time to grieve. They have to prepare everything immediately, stay up all night for three days straight, and make endless decisions: how many servings of food to order, what drinks to provide,” she said.
“It’s so strange that families are given no time to mourn. Traditional funerals may still be the norm for now, but simplified funerals will become mainstream in future.”
Yoon Young-jin, chief executive of funeral service provider Jeongdo Sangjo, said negative perceptions surrounding no-viewing funerals, such as the idea that they are chosen only by those in financial hardship or that they deny the dead a final farewell, are fading.
“In 2024, we handled around 100 such funerals. In 2025, the number has doubled to 200,” he said.
Another funeral service provider, Edenaid chief Lee Hak-young, said the number of no-viewing funerals has been rising rapidly, as more families opt to reduce funeral costs and spend time quietly with immediate relatives, comforting one another.
He added that no-viewing funerals have even outnumbered those conducted under traditional funeral arrangements recently.
Funeral director Lee Young-woo also noted a sharp increase. “The number of no-viewing funerals we conducted each month has doubled,” he said.
“In the past, they were seen as shabby or insufficient. But as the bereaved grow younger, there is a stronger mindset of not spending money on performative or unnecessary aspects of funerals.”
Yeungnam University sociology professor Heo Chang-deok views the trend positively.
“In the past, funerals were more about the social networks of the bereaved than the deceased. Large, display-oriented funerals are costly. No-viewing funerals are a rational alternative that allows for quiet remembrance, and this culture is likely to continue.” - The Korea Herald/ANN
