Making a living, from the dead

Kil Hae-yong, CEO of the trauma scene cleanup service Sweepers, poses in protective clothing in front of his working tools at his office in Bulgwang-dong, Seoul, Monday. / Korea Times photo by Kim Hyo-jin

By Kim Hyo-jin

Blood stains, maggots crawling on the floor, rancid odors of a rotting corpse are the basics Kil Hae-yong, a 33-year-old trauma scene cleaner, encounters at his workplace.

"There's no single difficulty I've felt in doing my job," Kil said against common expectations during an interview with The Korea Times, Monday.

Kil sometimes cleans up spaces where dead bodies have been laying for days, sometimes for months. Unattended deaths, suicide, or murder cases are what he deals with.

The ex-barbeque restaurant owner set up the trauma scene cleanup service Sweepers in 2011. The sudden change of career was simply led by his eagerness to find a job with rosy prospects.

"To be successful, I had to do something no one else does," Kil said.

It was not only a niche business, but also a business that was sure to have solid growth, he said.

"About 250,000 people died that year in South Korea, roughly 700 a day. I was sure there should be at least one unattended death I can work with," he said.

"Single-family households in Korea number about 5.2 million now. And it is estimated to grow to 10 million in decades. I think they are all my potential customers."

Kil is now a veteran in the field who earns about 3-4 million won ($2,600-3,500) per case. He roughly takes six to seven cases a month.

What makes his business different to others is how effective he is at getting rid of the stench.

His work starts from the scene left behind after a corpse is cleared by people from a morgue. He cleans up the contaminated area where a body has been, and thousands of maggots and flies have spread all over the house from the remains of the body.

Keepsakes of the dead are sorted next. In case the person has no family, which is often the case, they are given to a junk dealer and a reclamation company.

Kil rips off floorboards and wall paper as body fluids and maggots often seep through cracks. He devotes a day or two more purely to kill the smell by sterilizing the space with an ozone-laser machine. This basic process takes four days.

What strikes him the most is not a mess or grisly scene left by the dead, but the moments when he witnesses how broken and fragmented families are, he said.

"Those who are over 65 and have no family have better conditions regarding death as they are cared by the government," he said.

"A tragic group is males in their 50s who still have distant family. They reluctantly seek help from others and often end up found dead alone."

He recalled a case of the death of a "goose father," a man left behind in Korea to make money while the rest of the family lives abroad.

The man died in a 6.6 square-meter room at a "goshiwon" or small, cramped room in a housing facility for those preparing for national exams in Seoul and was found days later by a person next door due to the rotten smell.

His wife and son from the U.S. who barely speak Korean did not even come inside the room and stayed at a coffee shop and left a few minutes after paying Kil.

"It took only 10 minutes to sort out his stuff. It was quite shocking to see how minimalistic he lived his life," Kil said. "It made me wonder what his life meant as I saw his family so nonchalant, and even laughing talking to each other when I approached them."

After years of encountering unfortunate deaths, he could not help gaining a pessimistic view in life, or what he said he would rather call a "realistic" view.

"Rather than spending your life having family and raising children, I'd recommend you appreciate and invest your given time for yourself," he said.

"For your information, having some money in your hands is a smart way to prepare for death," he added, cynically recalling a son who had refused to collect his father's body but came right after he was told a bankbook was found.

For "well-dying," now a buzzword in Korean society, he advised that people have a chance to look back at their lives and make a plan for after their death.

"I think it'd be ideal if the government would encourage people to write an ‘ending note,' a notebook including personal records and dying wishes, like they do in Japan," he said.

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