Medicalized Death and the Reification of Spiritual Bonds: Contemporary Korean Funeral Rites

초록

As a critical review and theoretical reflection, this study explores the transformation of funeral rites in contemporary Korean society and analyzes how ‘Filial Piety,’ a core Confucian value, has been reshaped by the mechanisms of medicalization and capitalism. Traditionally, in the Confucian worldview, death was not a biological termination but a religious process of advancing toward immortality through descendants’ ‘remembrance and representation.’ This paper identifies ‘cultural hybridity,’ where contemporary Korean funerals combine various religious traditions such as Christianity and Buddhism with secular forms, as positive evidence that the aspiration for spiritual bonds still persists. On the other hand, it establishes that the primary cause of damaging the public significance of death is not this mixture of rituals but ‘funeral capitalism’ based on market logic and medicalization. The study criticizes the fact that capitalist secularity has replaced the practice of Filial Piety with ‘reified consumption,’ thereby excluding those lacking economic means from the process of death. Conclusively, this study suggests the restoration of ‘spiritual publicness’ based on non-material continuing bonds and communal mourning, rather than material display. © 2026 by the authors.

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