Land of Morning Calm mourns: Part 1

A funeral procession in the late 19th or early 20th century. Robert Neff Collection

By Robert Neff

In the 19th century, Korea was often referred to as the "Land of the Morning Calm" but it was far from accurate ― especially at night when it became a realm of loud mourning.

In the early 1890s, George G. Gilmore, one of the first American teachers in Korea, wrote:

"When a death occurs in any [Korean] family, the neighbors have no excuse for being ignorant of the fact. The women and girls and boys mourn in shrill and penetrating tones that reverberate through the night air with frightful distinctness."

He was not the only one to write about the mournful wailing. At the end of the cholera epidemic in 1895, Sally Sill (the wife of the American Minister to Korea) described in her journal the nights in Seoul: "[Cholera] seems to be abating, and the wailing of the mourners grows less. It is a weird kind of sound and we are glad enough not to hear so much of it."

Death was not always sudden and unexpected. When a person was at death's doorstep, they were often dressed in their finest clothing. Once they passed, the clothing of the deceased was removed by one of the family members, generally, their wife or mother, who at night, while mourning loudly, burned the clothing ― usually in the street in front of the house. By doing this, the deceased would be assured of having presentable clothing in the afterlife.

A strange image of the passage of death ― a dead pony, a curious dog and an elderly man smoking next to a "funeral coffin." Robert Neff Collection

At first, Gilmore was somewhat surprised when he encountered these women in the streets performing this last dutiful act for their loved ones, but, because he witnessed it so often, he soon became jaded and tried to quickly and respectfully pass by them. He may have become jaded but they were always surprised by his presence and quickly fled the vicinity ― their mourning cries dying in the distance.

When Henry Loomis, an American missionary, visited Korea in the fall of 1885, he also felt compelled to describe Koreans mourning the loss of a loved one:

"I passed a house where a person had died, and the body was being prepared for burial. It was first covered with straw and then wrapped about very tightly with ropes. While the preparations were going on, two young men stood by and were uttering the most wild and extravagant expressions of grief. I was told that these persons were probably hired for this purpose…"

Horace N. Allen witnessed more than his share of Korean funerals and wrote about them. He arrived in Korea in 1884 as a missionary doctor and left in 1904 as the last American Minister to Korea ― he had witnessed several cholera and smallpox epidemics, wars and the fatal results of Machiavellian politics. We know he attended several state funerals but it is doubtful he was ever present at a commoner's funeral ― he probably just witnessed the latter from afar as a disinterested spectator.

Land of Morning Calm mourns: Part 2

2023-02-28 20:35 | About the past

According to Allen, ordinary funerals in Seoul were held at night and exited from the city by way of one of the two city gates authorized to allow corpses to pass through. "Money is often spent on these occasions in excess of the circumstances of the family. In the case of a person of standing and wealth, there may be months of delay during which the astrologers busy themselves in the selection of a propitious date for the interment, and a suitable site, in case the family site has not already been selected."

A funeral procession during the Japanese occupation. Robert Neff Collection

As noted above, the cost of a funeral could financially ruin a family so it is little wonder that informal "burial clubs" became vogue. The three members of each club would regularly contribute a small amount of money until a sum equivalent to $33 USD was achieved. Then, when the first member died, his family would receive 30% of the cash to help with his funeral expenses. The family of the second person to die would receive 33% of the original sum and when the final club member died, his family would receive the remaining funds.

There were other costs. According to Isabella Bird Bishop, an English travel writer who spent an extended period of time in Korea: "A mourner may not enter the palace grounds, and as mourning for a father lasts for three years, a courtier thus bereaved is for that time withdrawn from Court."

Allen described the funeral processions as being "most elaborate, consisting of the bier, white-clad mourners in chairs covered with white, hired mourners ― male and female, mounted and on foot, and numbers of men bearing red lanterns. The mourners keep up a loud perfunctory chant as the procession [wound] its way to the gates and beyond" ― to the selected grave site.

According to Bishop, the large hat nearly concealed the mourner's face so carrying the grass-cloth screen was almost a work of supererogation. Robert Neff Collection

Sally Sill also described these nocturnal funerals ― many of her experiences seem to have been from her own bedroom:

"I wish I could give you an adequate idea of a Korean hearse, it is a kind of litter with a canopy over it, hung on four poles. The coloring is gorgeous. The most vivid red, green and yellow, it is so brilliant that it can be seen from afar. This is carried by four coolies, a few yards behind come the hired mourners. They vary in number according to the rank of the family. They weep and wail and (according to my idea) howl in the most melancholy way, and if the hearse can be seen from afar, these can be heard even a greater distance. Many of the funerals are in the night, one who is wakeful can often hear them when they pass..."

Of course, not all funerals were held at night as evidenced by Bishop's account of a daytime funeral:

"Funerals usually go out near dusk with a great display of colored lanterns, but I was fortunate enough to see an artisan's corpse carried out by daylight. First came four drums and a sort of fife perpetrating a lively tune as an accompaniment to a lively song. These were followed by a hearse, if it may be called so, a domed and gaudily painted construction with a garland of artificial flowers in the center of the dome, a white Korean coat thrown across the roof, and four flagstaffs with gay flags at the four corners, bamboo poles, flower-wreathed, forming a platform on which the hearse was borne by eight men in peaked yellow hats garlanded with blue and pink flowers. Bouquets of the same were disposed carelessly on the front and sides of the hearse, the latter being covered with shield-shaped flags of gaudily colored muslin. The chief mourner followed, completely clothed in sackcloth, wearing an umbrella-shaped hat over 4 feet in diameter, and holding a sackcloth screen before his face by two bamboo handles. Men in flower-wreathed hats surrounded him, some of them walking backward and singing. He looked fittingly grave, but it is a common custom for those who attend the chief mourner to try to make him laugh by comic antics and jocular remarks."

A later writer echoed this paradox of entertainment and mourning:

"The coffin bearers have to counterfeit jollity by singing and making drunken movements so that the coffin sways from side to side. Wailing concubines follow in sedan chairs, cracking peanuts and smoking pipes at intervals between the wailing; [while] the eldest son affects complete inability to walk and has to be supported on either side; he leans on a wooden staff if mourning a father, and on a bamboo staff for the death of his mother."

It is interesting to note the wailing concubines. According to Gilmore, "female relations do not accompany the body to the grave."

Elaborate funerals were for the wealthy but for the economically challenged, funerals were simple affairs ― the lack of coin making them humble, if not ignoble, affairs. Like those of their wealthy counterparts, they were dressed in their finest clothing, but they were not paraded through the street and accompanied by a party of hired mourners ― they were simply wrapped in straw and placed upon a "rude bier covered by a half-cylinder of paper pasted to reed hoops." This bier was then conveyed by two men ― hired laborers ― who often left it on the roadside in front of an inn while they consumed their breakfast or "quaffed" some alcohol before resuming their task.

During epidemics, the poor were not even granted the dubious honor of the above funeral, they were simply piled upon litters ― sometimes four or five corpses shared the same litter ― and covered only with straw mats or sackcloth as they were hastily conveyed to their final resting place.

It is the final resting place that is the subject of our next article.

Robert Neff has authored and co-authored several books, including Letters from Joseon, Korea Through Western Eyes and Brief Encounters.