[Feature] Dying senior activist pushes for different funeral culture in South Korea
Social affairsSept 9, 2018
Last month, Kim Byung-guk attended his own funeral. The 85-year-old, who was diagnosed with stage 4 prostate cancer last year, asked the attendees not to wear black. “I want to have this service while I’m still alive,” Kim wrote in his invitation to his friends. “Please dress in bright colors. Hope we can sing and dance together.” Kim’s funeral ceremony, held on Aug. 14 in a hospice facility in Seoul, was indeed quite different from what one normally sees at Korean funerals. No one was sobbing.