Funeral Capitalism: Commodification and Digital Marketing of Funeral Services in Contemporary Korea
Author(s): Gil-Soo Han
Source: Korean Studies, 2016, Vol. 40 (2016), pp. 58-77
Published by: University of Hawai'i Press
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/44508428
Korean Funeral | PDF | Funeral | Capitalism
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Funeral Capitalism: Commodification and Digital Marketing of Funeral Services in Contemporary Korea
Gil-Soo Han
This paper attempts to understand and analyze pariah-capitalism" in South Korea through the case of highly dehumanized and commodified funeral services as advertised in the media. There is much in common between Max Weber's concept of pariah-capitalism and "funeral capitalism" in the context of this paper, the latter of which pays attention to the practice and impact of pariah-capitalism on the lives of Koreans in Korean society. The paper starts by commenting on a couple of dramatic changes in Korean funeral rites in the last two decades: the change of the venues of funeral rites and the popularization of cremation rather than traditional burials. In addition, the dramatic commercialization of funeral services has created a huge source of income for prestigious general hospitals and funeral service conglomerates. I then discuss some long-lasting socioeconomic and cultural aspects of Korea' that have paved the way for a high degree of commercialization of funeral services, eventually triggering the coming of "funeral capitalism" to South Korea. The ways in which funeral capitalism is manifested in Korean society are illustrated through an analysis of TV advertisements. This analysis reveals the extent to which funeral services are rituals through which socioeconomically and culturally grounded Korean greed is fulfilled, illustrating the characteristics of a highly competitive and overly dehumanized Korean capitalism that is strongly promoted by the digital media.
Introduction
According to Edgar Morin, humans are the only living beings who incorporate death into their life, whose deaths are accompanied by funeral ceremonies and who believe in resurrection or life after death (Morin [1970] 2000, cited in Kang 2010: 87). How humans perceive, and deal with, death and dying reflect different times and space in history (Aries 2008; Kellehear 2007). People develop an understanding of what a desirable or undesirable kind of death is depending on their cultural and religious values. Whether a burial is preferred to cremation and the choice of materials to bury together with the deceased are affected not only by cultural and religious values but also by class and status. Socioeconomic structural and cultural contexts have resulted in unique funeral rites that are continually modified (e.g., Dariely 2014; Park 2010a). When funeral rites are at the crossroads of pre-industrial and industrial periods, they are likely to reflect the change and confusion of the time. This may be true of funeral rites in every country, since the world has been rapidly changing, especially during the last half century, in terms of technological development, concerns over climate change, and the acceleration of individualism in the context of neoliberalism. This is so irrespective of whether we refer to the East or the West. South Korea has literally emerged from the ashes of the Korean War (1950-53), made cultural changes, and achieved socioeconomic success. Many aspects of Korean culture and rites have experienced rapid changes. This paper examines how Korean funeral rites have changed in recent years, and the socioeconomic and cultural factors that influenced those changes. Further, it is of concern to observe an extremely high degree of commercialization of funeral services and a consequent erosion of their function to value human relations among the living and between the living and the deceased (i.e., emotions of the living regarding the deceased). An examination of the current status of funeral rites in Korean society can provide us with a vital understanding of key sociocultural characteristics of contemporary Korean society and the ways in which Korean society is coping with the intersection of tradition and modernity. This has not been attempted before and is the goal of this paper, by employing a critical realist perspective, which will be elaborated later (Archer 1989, 1995; Bhaskar 1989). I will illustrate my arguments by analyzing selected televison advertisements for funeral services.
Literature Review
From the content of Korean media reports, readers can quickly ascertain that Korean funerals are often far from affordable and have long-lasting financial impacts on families whose loved ones have died and been "fare-welled." This high cost seems to be one of many concerns and risks that
Koreans are informed of through the media, but quickly put aside and forget. Yet the problem remains. Despite the significance of the problem, there are not enough attempts to understand and analyze sociocultural dimensions underpinning the problem. This may be partly due to the "taboo" nature of the funeral rite and partly because Koreans in contemporary Korean society have many other urgent matters to address in their everyday lives.
What does the existing literature say about the notable changes that have occurred to Korean funeral rites in recent decades? 'What are the broader cultural contexts in which Korean funeral rites take place, and the structural changes in Korean society that brought about changes to funeral rites?
Park Chang-Won (2010b) notes two apparent changes in Korean funerals over the last two decades. First, funerals took place at home until the 1980s, but now take place at hospital mortuaries or funeral halls. Second, cremation has replaced burial as the most common method of disposal. Park provides the following explanations. First, a predominant proportion of Koreans have come to live in terraced houses or apartments since the 1980s, having previously lived in detached or "stand-alone" houses with their own outdoor space—nzadang--for family celebrations and events with neighbors. The disappearance of maa'ang made it difficult to hold funerals at apartments (Park 2010b: 28). Second, since the 1990s, the shortage of burial spaces has become particularly acute. The Korean government implemented modern ways of disposing of dead bodies and provided modern facilities for cremation. The media has also unequivocally supported the shift from burials to cremation (p. 23). This behavior acknowledges that land for burial is scarce for a population of over forty million. Prior to the 1990s, cremation had been regarded as a remnant of Japanese imperialism and Koreans had a distaste for cremation for decades (Kim 2005: 56). Third, the emergence of columbaria has enabled the living to pay tribute to the dead conveniently.
These observations provide empirical explanations as to why the venues of funeral rites have changed and the methods of disposing of corpses have fundamentally changed. However, the fundamental or underpinning explanations for the following question remain: what have been the changes in Korean society at a deeper structural level in the last three decades? I suggest that rapid industrialization, urbanization, and division of labor have initiated radical changes in the everyday life of Koreans and consequently their thought processes, attitudes, and broader values. How these social phenomena have become intertwined and have molded the funeral
rites of today is yet to be explored. For example, a broad community-based approach toward funeral rites has turned into a much more individualistic approach. The catalyst for this change is an obvious increase in Koreans' disposable income, which has enabled Koreans to seek, for instance, funeral directors rather than friends or community leaders as was traditional in the past. In turn, large and sophisticated funeral service companies have mushroomed. After all, "[c]ities are above all the seat of the most advanced economic division of labor" (Simmel 1971: 335, 337). The highly urbanized Korean society has been conducive to the accelerating division of labor in nearly all occupations.
Park (2010b) aptly points out that whereas people were born and died at home prior to the 1980s, people have since died and been born in hospitals. Today, funerals take place in public buildings such as hospital mortuaries or funeral halls. I contend that these changes are driven by continuing industrialization and urbanization, which have been critical factors in creating nuclear families in Korea, effectively separating older parents from younger families. The nuclear family stems from the individualistic lifestyle of urbanized and industrialized Korea, in which the life of a man is organized around his work. The formation of nuclear families has led them (un)knowingly or (un)willingly to "desert" their older parents. In this process, the long-held concept of Korean filial piety has been dramatically altered. Urban planning has accompanied government policies requiring the separation of public cemeteries from residential areas.
Moreover, in addition to government policies, the Westernization of rituals has been a continuing influence on Korean funerary rites especially in the era of globalization and media saturation. For example, socioeconomic institutions and cultural rituals of Japan and the United States have been routinely introduced to Koreans through the media. This infiltration by foreign cultures and rituals cannot be ignored. Sullivan (2013) and Potter (2014) have studied the impact of continuing exposure to the media on culture change.
As Koreans have experienced rapid industrialization and urbanization, they are still grappling with the ways in which their traditional values and customs can be incorporated into contemporary lifestyles and vice versa. By understanding their core values one may gain insight into why Koreans think and behave in particular ways. Alford (1999) argues that Koreans maintain and live in tightly knit networks—an un (we) world in which they feel a sense of belonging to a family of descendants—and have developed a strong sense of nationalism (Han 2016; Shin 2006). The u,iworld has a blurred boundary between a group-self and we-self, whose dominant
values are chong (affection), han (suffering), and kibun (mood) as Koreans would like to manage their social networks. Han is a defining value of the Korean people as they feel they have gone through socioeconomic and cultural struggles in unique ways. Ch5ng seems to be "the social glue" that mediates interactions. These values are vital in understanding how Koreans participate in critical rituals such as weddings and funeral services, through which they make substantial efforts to stay in tight networks (Kendall 1996a). They in fact fear being isolated from their networks (Alford 1999). The funeral remains one of the Korean rituals through which these beliefs and attitudes are profoundly expressed.
Modernization and Urbanization of Korean Society
As briefly noted, urbanization and industrialization have fundamentally changed the socioeconomic structure of Korean society, and consequently influenced the changes in funeral rites. What kinds of structural changes in Korean society have accompanied urbanization and industrialization? Weinstein and Weinstein (1989: 55) point to Georg Simmel's observation of the coming of modernization and the metropolis in the West through the shift from mechanical solidarity to organic solidarity (Durkheim 1984) or from Gemeinschaft to Gesselschafi (Tönnies 2001). According to Weinstein and Weinstein (1989: 55), Simmel's dialectical approach toward modernization accompanied by the metropolis is negotiated between "Durkheim's emphasis on the objectivity of society and Tönnies's stress on the deracinated individual by relating the individual's isolation to the growth of hyper-differentiated culture." I think this comparison may be one of the classical debates between structuralist/realist and inter-pretivist/postmodernist perspectives on how we understand history and society. Although I base this paper broadly on a realist perspective, I find persuasive and relevant Weinstein and Weinstein's (1989) interpretation and reiteration of Simmel's view of the metropolis since the views closely represent the urbanized and industrialized Korean society today:
In the metropolis there is simply too much diversity for the possibility of organizing the contents of life into an objective whole to be taken seriously.... [Als society has become more "organic" (functionally specialized) it has lost its character as an organism with a substantive unity of purpose.... Yet modernity is also oppressive, but by virtue of its variety, disjointedness, and abstraction, rather than its uniformity, cohesion, and concrete particularity.... [T]he metropolis ... has lost qualitative unity. (pp. 56-57)
Indeed, disjointedness, individualism, lack of cohesion, and the loss of qualitative unity seem to be typical characteristics of modernity and urban life, including the rapidly urbanized Korean society (Farrall 2012). As Weinstein and Weinstein (1989: 58) note, the process of modern cultural development is epitomized by "the predominance of what one can call the objective spirit over the subjective" (Simmel [1918] 1971: 337). Individuals have carried out "an intelligible adaptation" at best or have displayed "functional schizophrenia" at worst as reactions to the oppressive dominance of the objective spirit (Weinstein and Weinstein 1989: 58). To put this differently, individual agency often finds a given sociocultural and structural influence overwhelming. Individuals continue to strive for and achieve their own goals while designing their own ways to "fit into" the given structure. This is what Koreans as individual agents have continued to display especially in the last half century, constantly adjusting to ongoing changes in the socioeconomic context. In general, the agency—structure relationship is hardly ever harmonious, mainly because there can never be a policy or structure that meets the requirements of every member of a community or nation-state. The structure is often established for a particular portion of the citizenry of a nation-state rather than the majority. Moreover, the structure often continues to function to minimize any major disruption to the existing stratifications of a given society. In some societies wherein power distance is considerable, employers' socioeconomic exploitation of and control over workers are apparent. In some societies, this relationship is expressed as pariah capitalism, or ch 'önmin chabonjuüi in the case of South Korea (Back 1998).
As noted, key characteristics of modernity and urban life have brought about anonymity, disjointedness, and individualistic human interactions in the community, although these have gone through slight modifications with the arrival of the Internet. Undoubtedly, these are important components of modern capitalism, which is supposedly based on rational thinking (Brubaker 1984: 1). Most contemporary humans in the context of modern capitalism have a limited capacity to make any changes to it; they generally consider that the social activities they engage in (e.g., contemporary funeral rituals) have been introduced for rational reasons. Whether these activities are actually based on rational thought or are even desirable or morally acceptable is either rarely questioned or is generally beyond the individual's ken. This represents the limits of agency in a given structural context. Brubaker reiterates Max Weber's definition of modern capitalism, in that a key component is rationality:
Thus modern capitalism is defined by the rational (deliberate and systematic) pursuit of profit through the rational (systematic and calculable) organization of formally free labor and through rational (impersonal, purely instrumental) exchange on the market, guided by rational (exact, purely quantitative) accounting procedures and political systems. (1984: 2)
Human behaviors and social activities and interactions are mostly based on these principles of modern society, which apply to Korean capitalism with little variation. Who then would question these behaviors and activities? This paper is going to question them with reference to the current funeral rites practices in Korea.
The Concept of Funeral Capitalism
Prior to discussing funeral capitalism, it will be fruitful to discuss "pariah capitalism" since both operate similarly with little regard for ethics and duty of care. The concept of pariah capitalism was first introduced by Max Weber in The Protestant Ethic and The Spirit of Capitalism (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, [1930] (1958)) and refers to a rather small-scale and underdeveloped form of capitalism (e.g., traditional trade, usury, and early banking) as observed ahead of its subsequent development (Swedberg 1998: 49). The pariah capitalist is inclined to seek profit through the appropriation of capital rather than through the production of goods. According to Weber, pariah capitalism can be represented by "political capitalism," which tends to seek speculative profit based on a relatively low standard of ethics. Such political capitalism contrasts with "modern industrial capitalism" (Gerth and Mills 1946: 66, cited in Back 1998: 253). Political capitalism or pariah capitalism is often characterized by the following: it seeks tremendous profit through commercial activities and it seeks to occupy and strengthen its monopolistic position in a social hierarchy through legitimate political and religious support (Back 1998: 253). As a critique of capitalist practices, I contend that elements of pariah capitalism can be observed in any contemporary economy, varying only by a matter of degree.
Weber's pariah capitalism has been translated to ch 'önmin chabonjuii in Korea. Whilst this appears to be a literal translation, its origin, meaning, and usage in the Korean media are quite different from Weber's term. The latter was meant to distinguish its less-developed or premodernized nature, whereas the Korean ch 'ônmin chabonjuui possesses a negative connotation, as if Korean capitalism was practiced in the old days of the Chosón dynasty where ch 'ô'nmin (outcasts) were basically given no human
rights. In this respect, I fully appreciate the use of ch '5nmin chabonjuüi as it more aptly describes the broader relations of production in Korean society as crudely influenced by the forces and modes of production in the Korean context (Back 1998: 253). Ch'Jnmin chabonjuüi best describes the habit of some companies to appropriate or treat their workers in extreme ways and seek profits through business activities or overly aggressive marketing, for example, the sinking of the Sewólho ferry in April 2014,2 and the so-called Korean Air "nut rage" incident involving an executive's mistreatment of employees in December 2014 .3 And there have been numerous reported incidents of rich female customers mistreating service personnel in prestigious department stores for no good reason—the so-called kaptchil In the culture of ch '5nmin chabonjuii, ethics, rules, regulations, and caring attitudes toward employees or other humans yield to the haves' power, prestige, and profit.
The Birth of Funeral Capitalism: A Conceptual Framework
Of a range of social science theories, the critical realist tradition analytically separates structure from agent. Structure refers to given socioeconomic contexts, cultures, or social institutions that have been established over a long period of time (Archer 1995, 2003). They do not generally change over a short span of time. For this reason, they are often called intran-sitional factors. Dynamic intersections between different intransitional factors produce particular sociocultural contexts that may be conducive to the emergence of unique social phenomena bearing the characteristics of, or dissenting voices arising from, those intransitional factors. In regard to the culture of funeral services in contemporary Korea, what are the intransitional characteristics of Korean culture? Kang (2010) suggests a number of factors, from which I draw the following: (1) saving one's face; (2) believing in the impact of the dead on the living; and (3) showing off and superficial cultures, which may have little to do with meaningful interactions. All of these elements appear to be based and observed on indigenized Confucian traditions intertwined with the deep-rooted and prevalent shamanism in Korean society even in the twenty-first century (Baker 2006, 2008; Kendall 1996b).
"Face" refers to the "positive social value a person effectively claims for himself" (Brown and Levinson 1987: 61). "Saving face" is similar to Goffman's "impression management." Kang (2010: 93) mentions that Korean culture tends to be generous toward or even forgiving of the wrongdoings of the dead person, which encourages, for instance, children
to indicate by weeping loudly that they had enjoyed a positive relationship with their late parent. Moreover, in the Confucian culture, it is considered desirable to suppress egoistic interests and pay attention to family, group, and community interests. Thus a child's overt expression of sorrow over the death of a parent is considered desirable and positive (Kang 2010: 93). Appropriate treatment of ancestors and continuing ancestor worship have been an important part of Korean culture (Lee 1984; Park and Muller 2014). This is deeply rooted in the indigenized Confucianism intertwined with shamanism. For example, Christian ch 'udosik (memorial services) is based on Confucian ancestor worship (Grayson 2009). Also rooted in and related to Confucianism-based culture and hierarchy is the tendency to pay attention to "formalities" rather than "contents." It has been said that many Koreans actually went financially broke after holding extravagant funeral ceremonies during the premodern as well as modern history of Korea (I. G. Kim 1997, cited in Kim 2006). Thus, lavish funerals that took their financial toll on families were typically performed to save the "face" of the living rather than out of fear of the dead.
Together with the already established and long-lasting Korean culture discussed above, there are other sociocultural factors and phenomena that have been established over the last century or so and continue to go through modifications. They include the following: monetization of material exchanges, urbanization, industrialization, individualism, the dissolution of the extended family and formation of the nuclear family (Lee 1996: 54), a high degree of commercialization/marketization, and media saturation (Park 2010b: 33)—I have already noted some of these.
Georg Simmel's (1971: 328-29) perspectives on value and money suggest how we can understand an extreme degree of commodification or monetization of funeral services. Simmel noted rationality, calculability, and impersonality as central characteristics of money. Of course, money in many forms has been around for thousands of years on the Korean Peninsula even in its "simpler economies" (p. 330). However, just as Simmel's theorization of money is largely in relation to modern Western society, I argue that it was during the period of Japanese imperialism and/ or since Korean independence from Japan in 1945 that Korean society has been fully geared up to monetization. This argument is in line with the contention of Ahn (2008a: 23; 2008b) who notes that Japan enforced its monetary system on Korea from 1902 and then introduced a revised monetary policy in 1931. During the Japanese imperialist period, premodern or premonetary sociocultural contexts were still strong, but Koreans also learned the power and usefulness of money that might have been "created" by selling farmland or mountains they owned. The money was used to establish modern educational institutes and even to support Korean independence movements in active operation from abroad, such as in China and the United States. In other cases, especially since the end of the Korean War, the money from selling farmland or livestock was used to support children in obtaining modern education, which was already well established in Japan but was a new way to climb up the social hierarchy in Korea, having been available only to the noble class during the Chosön period (1392-1910).
During the 1960s and 1970s, a massive migration of farmers from rural to urban areas occurred. Many farmers sold their land and reduced the volume of their properties to a sum of capital. Their goal was to make more profit than they were able to from farming and provide their children with better education and more prosperous lives in the city (Park 2004). In this context, having experienced the power of money in their everyday lives, money appeared to be both the means and ends in their lives. On the other hand, the characteristics of everyday Korean life were unequivocally affection- and mood-based (Alford 1999), noncalculable and highly personal rather than rational, calculable, and impersonal. These characteristics were coupled with Confucian principles especially when it came to the experience of funeral services. This is how premodern characteristics of funeral services have continued to prevail, especially since the late 1980s, when Korean living standards significantly improved and disposable income increased. In fact, funeral services had strongly resisted any change for decades prior to the 1980s (Kang 2007: 150), whereas other rituals such as weddings had rapidly Westernized, changed, and hybridized—Korean and Western aspects, including venues, were mixed and matched (Kendall 1996a). However, following the 1988 Seoul Olympics (i.e., the early 1990s), professional funeral services became sought-after in accordance with the division of labor, which is a key characteristic of modern capitalist society (Kim 2005: 77). Today, in 2016, Korea has five tertiary institutes that produce professional funeral directors.4 In the increasingly affluent context of Korean society, Koreans are willing to entrust funeral directors with performing funeral services, which were carried out by relatives of the dead or community members in premodern Korea and prior to the 1990s. The funeral service industry has consequently mushroomed (Chun 2014). The timing of the supply and demand of funeral services might have been simultaneous as those were already popular in Japan and the United States and potential Korean customers and businessmen of funeral companies were well informed through the media and the movement of people.
Of these changes, a conspicuous phenomenon is the conglomeration of funeral services. There are well over one hundred "large-scale" funeral service companies in Korea today.' The level of their commercialization
has been significant. It is estimated there were about three hundred funeral service companies in Korea as of 2007.6 There are occasional reports publicizing the top-ten funeral service companies, including the value of company assets and the number of members. The former ranges from $70 million to $250 million; and the latter ranges from 73,000 to 300,000. In the following sections I analyze a few TV advertisements by one such company in order to illustrate the prevalent practice of funeral capitalism.
Research Methods
I have randomly sampled six YTN (Yonhap Televison News) advertisements for funeral services, broadcast from 2008 to 2014. Their content reflects what people desire or dislike, which makes them worthwhile objects of media analysis. The transcripts of the advertisements are relatively short; I present the results of my analysis of the advertisements below. My analysis is based on the principles of the grounded theory method (Corbin and Strauss 1990). The analysis considers both what the content was meant to express as well as my critical realist interpretation of the content (Sayer 1992).
Findings and Discussion
The following is a TV advertisement funded by a leading funeral service company that aired in 2008. The company is named Pumo Sarang Sangjo,8 literally meaning "Loving Parents Funeral Services." The company's name implies that a funeral service has to be about loving parents or expressing filial piety. In this section, I present some transcripts of TV advertisements for funeral services in recent years, followed by analysis.
Case 1: A Thirty-Second TV Advertisement Funded by Pumo Sarang Sango in 2008
Returning from a funeral ceremony, a man tells his wife:
The funeral I observed today was somewhat different. The deceased parent was well treated until the last moment. All the procedures were properly followed as the deceased had wished. From the death notice to the burial ground, six professionals aided the comfort of the deceased. My friend's [i.e., son of the deceased] heavy-mindedness has been much relieved. He found that his membership in the funeral service safeguarded his rights.
In addition, further information is displayed on the screen, including the following:
Parents [the deceased] are the focus of the funeral services under offer. Death notices through SMS make it easy to invite friends to the funeral rite. A memorial tribute video to remember parents is on offer.... A program to protect customers is available. The company is strong with capital of Won 0.1 billion [$10 million].
This thirty-second advertisement is effective in delivering a large amount of information. I analyze the advertisement in the following way. A funeral ceremony is the final rite where children express filial piety toward their parents. There is no explicit comment as to how the deceased was treated or how the children expressed filial piety toward their parents while they were alive, but the funeral service was coordinated with the help of six funeral directors or professionals. Formality seems to be given priority over content. It is possible that as they are taught about filial piety, most Koreans remain guilty throughout their lives, for they are often not able to practice adequately what they learned they ought to do for their parents. One important reason may be that most older parents live not with a child, but on their own. That is, living with parents tends to be regarded as a high form of filial piety despite the fact that it has become difficult ever since the start of industrialization in the 1960s. According to the Korean Bureau of Statistics, 71.5 percent of Korean families were nuclear families in 1970 and 82.3 percent in 2010; 18.8 percent were extended families in 1970 and 6.2 percent in 2010.9 Becoming a member of a funeral service company is not only a way to cope with expensive funeral services for parents, but also expresses filial piety belatedly at the time of their funeral. This is a way to alleviate the huge cost of a funeral. Middle-aged persons consider that a lavish funeral reflects their filial piety toward their parents. The annual insurance premium ranges from $30 to $1,200. It is not about rebuilding the relations between families and friends of the deceased that the funeral director may focus on, but the disposal of the body in the way that satisfies the children of the deceased.
As the advertisement puts it, the deceased parent is made to be the focus of the funeral service; however, in reality the focus is on satisfying or even "vindicating" what the children could not fully accomplish, that is, expressing filial piety to parents while they were alive (Kang 2007). The latest communication methods such as SMS and audiovisual displays seem to be integral parts of the services. "A program to protect customers" alludes to numerous cases of fraud wherein the customers of funeral service companies were financially mistreated, which I plan to discuss on another occasion.
Case 2: A TV Advertisement by Pumo Sarang Sangjo in 2011 The advertisement voice-over says the following:
Please raise your hands if you are concerned about [the cost of your future need for] funeral services. You can use the very hand that you raised to dial the following phone number of Pumo Sarang Sangjo.
The cost of funeral services has become a serious social concern for Koreans. It is this socioeconomic climate wherein financial preparation for funeral services has become a necessity and the professionally provided services have become prevalent. The latter offers an insurance policy that the concerned person is strongly encouraged to join. The monetized funeral services seem much in line with people's lives under the dominance of urbanization and industrialization. Indeed, income for Koreans has steadily grown since the 1970s, thus creating more disposable income for new or extra expenses such as funeral rites, although Korean economic improvement has not resolved income inequality (Suh 2011).
Case 3: A TV Advertisement by Pumo Sarang Sangjo in 2012 The voice-over says:
Experiencing the death of our own parents! Even if you have not joined an insurance policy for a funeral service, just give us a call. A funeral professional will get to you immediately and help you to deal with your parents' "passing," providing a hearse to the burial site. All these are provided free of charge. Loving Parents Funeral Service provides you with free provision of a hearse. Give us a call...
As already noted, funeral rites are handled not by family members, friends, or community members, but by professional funeral directors. In the context of competitive and monetized Korean economic relations, the provision of funeral services "free of charge" is simply not possible, but might be a way to lure the "ones in mourning" to resolve the "adverse" event. Or it might be that the hearse is free but everything else costs money and they cannot simply contract for the hearse. Such a business strategy appears to be hardly helpful or natural as it may exploit people's emotional vulnerability. If it is indeed a complimentary community service
as advertised,'° what makes such a service sustainable in the long run? Future customers might have to meet the cost in addition to the cost of the services under their request. I am not aware of any official complaint about this irresponsible advertisement.
Cases 4 and 5: Two TV Advertisements Funded by Pumo Sarang Sangjo in 2013
"A real story of success of Cho Son-I, NowOn Branch" goes as follows:
I have achieved my dream since working for Loving Parents Funeral Services for three years, while I could not achieve it as an employee of an insurance company in twenty years. You are curious about my income, aren't you? Please come and find out.
"A real story of ChOng On-Hi, a new Pusan Branch" goes as follows:
Getting to know what is involved in funeral services, I have found it remarkably fascinating, which makes my work enjoyable. I don't chase money. As I am really after enjoyable work, money follows me. You are curious about my income, aren't you? Please come and check it out.
I think Cho's serious engagement in, and commitment to, the funeral service industry is to be undoubtedly appreciated. Like any other service industry, funeral services have become professionalized with their own professionally trained staff. Moreover, if Cho could achieve her financial goal through the funeral industry, how fortunate she is. However, it is not a virtue in general and particularly in Korean society to boast about one's income. This may be considered to be as problematic as boasting about one's income from any other source. It is unnecessary to mention money and its link to funeral services. It is awkward that one's income from the funeral industry is flaunted and compared with incomes from other industries. This is as if one makes a fortune out of another's misfortune and publicizes this "good" news. I assume the central aim of the advertisement may be not only to recruit potential employees, but also to advertise the company's positive working environment that leads to the provision of quality services to its customers. This appears to be a strategy to maximize profit.
Whenever I have attended a funeral rite it has been a solemn and memorable time for reflection on my relations with the deceased and their acquaintances. I have always appreciated every aspect of what a funeral director can offer. My interview with a funeral director for a past research
project indeed led me to admire his considerate attitudes that he brought to every funeral service. It is possible that Ms. Chong really enjoys the funeral profession and does not chase money. Her comments on "enjoyable work" could be taken more seriously had she not provoked the audience's curiosity about her income. In fact, this may confuse the audience as to whether the advertisement is purely about profit making or providing a "caring" funeral service. The "successful" funeral directors in the advertisements seem to make little effort saving their own face in the context of Korean culture.
Case 6: A TV Advertisement Funded by Pumo Sarang Sangjo in 2014 The advertisement includes the following narration:
As if you were engraving your love for your parents on your heart I have engraved my parents' names on my business card. My father is Kang Chong-Ho and my mother is Yi SOn-Rye. I am their daughter, Life Coach Kang SOn-Mi. Loving one's parents is the principle of our company, Loving Parents Funeral Service.
As a result of urbanization and industrialization, nuclear families have become more common in recent decades. It has become difficult to have older parents within a nuclear family's household, which continues to breed individualism. Older parents with their own disposable income may like to pursue their own independent lives, unlike in the old days. Many middle-aged Koreans might have drawn their own lessons from their experiences of living with extended families. 'Whether or not filial piety was better practiced through such extended families is open to debate. However, there may be some degree of guilt were they not able to accommodate their parents in their own nuclear family household. In Korean culture, children do not commonly publicize their parents' names, but the narrator in this advertisement does. Kang's engraving of her parents' names on her business card appears to be a way to reduce her guilt or substitute this display for her inability to otherwise practice filial piety. In other words, living together with parents remains an expression of filial piety in the minds of contemporary Koreans. In reality, this is difficult. They may still be in the process of working out what the practicable way to practice filial piety is without living with their parents. In the meantime, one resolution is to engrave one's parents' names on business cards. Another resolution is to purchase funeral insurance as indicated earlier. Just as the company name, Pumo Sarang Sangjo, indicates, a respectful funeral rite is a critical component of one's expression of filial
piety. In fact, purchasing a funeral insurance plan, for example on Parents' Day,11 is commonly regarded as an act of filial piety. This is presented as a gift by the company and parents are informed.
What is also noticeable in this advertisement is that the scenes and people portrayed reflect Korean society in the 1960s and 1970s. Young people in the scenes are now middle-aged and the older people are now frail. 'While the advertisement closely relates to those who will sooner or later face the death of their parents, the visual scenes and lifestyles depicted are much more traditionally oriented than contemporary, that is, the social climate remains static and stuck in the past. It is this very distance between past tradition and "contemporary modernity" that Koreans are unable to accept. To put this differently, contemporary Koreans wish to embrace, and live in, both the past and present, and find it impossible to do so, but continue to pretend that it is possible. In this dilemma between the supposedly desirable culture of the past and contemporary culture in inevitably restraining Korean people to observe the desirable culture of the past, there prevails some obnoxious digital marketing with little regard to marketing ethics (Coetzee, Maree, and Van Heerden 2014).
Concluding Remarks
The key findings from the analysis of the TV advertisements may be summarized as follows. First, funeral rites are occasions as important as filial piety that might or might not have been expressed while the parents were alive. There is a significant degree of regret and guilt especially if the latter is the case. A lavish funeral rite is a conscious effort to overcome this guilt. Second, there is a high level of commodification of funeral services, accompanied by their professionalization. Purchasing funeral insurance has been a substitute for the traditional gathering of families and friends of the deceased. Further development or renewal of existing or new human relations on the occasion of the funeral service is significantly downplayed. Third, the concept of filial piety that was established in the past seems to stay strong in the minds of Korean people. However, Korean family structures have changed, and living conditions and lifestyles organized around work are hardly conducive to maintaining past methods of expressing filial piety. Here is an example to illustrate this. The spread of the infectious disease, MERS (Middle East Respiratory Syndrome), caused social upheaval in Korean society in the second half of 2015. An infected man who was quarantined could not participate in his mother's funeral. He experienced great grief since he felt he was not able to practice his filial
duty in the context of his mother's funeral. He called himself puihyoja, a person not carrying out filial piety. His thinking would broadly represent Korean attitudes. 12
Frustrated with the inability to practice filial piety in the present socioeconomic context, Koreans develop further frustration and pay excessive attention to providing extravagant funeral services for their parents. Furthermore, Koreans are now affluent enough to afford the expensive services and the demand is met by the mushrooming of funeral service companies that spend a large amount of money on digital advertisements in order to promote their businesses. The funeral service industry seems to be preoccupied with profiting from a most significant ceremony for both the living and the dead. Should funeral services exist to facilitate and make meaningful the ritual of a person's final journey or should a person die for the financial interest of the funeral service industry?
One cannot overstate the significance of death in human life. Death is part of life and one's final journey could be a solemn moment of sadness or a moment of celebration of a good life, but should not be seen as an opportunity for profit making. A professionalized funeral, which may necessarily involve some monetary exchange, is still not the same as a lavish, showy funeral. More importantly, the funeral rite is not an opportunity to display filial piety.
Acknowledgments
An earlier version of this paper was presented at the 9th Korean Studies Association of Australasia Biennial Conference, November 25-27, 2015, University of South Australia, Adelaide. I am indebted to Roald Maliang-kaij and Caron Eastgate Dann for their constructive comments on an earlier version. I am solely responsible for any defects of the paper.
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Notes
1. This includes Confucian culture, religions, monetization, urbanization, dissolution of extended families and the formation of nuclear families, an increase in living standards, and commercialization.
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