Hyung-Jin Kim of Associated Press has done a nice piece on a new idea from Korea Life Consulting Co: fake funerals. It has been run in the Taipei Times (South Koreans give their deaths a trial run: ‘Well-dying’ – having a mock funeral after a set of seminars – is touted as a tool to promote well-being) and the Los Angeles Times (Company aims to spread well-being through well-dying: Experts see the trend as a sign that South Koreans have become affluent enough to be able to consider quality-of-life issues).
Anna Fifield wrote another story on the same subject for the Financial Times on 22 July 2008 (When death is a reminder to live). The below images were taken for the FT article by Seokyong Lee, but never made it.
South Korean companies are sending employees on fake funeral courses to help prevent suicide
Participants sit at candelit desks and are told to write their last will and testament
Attendees are prompted by questions such as: If you died today, what would you tell your family?
Many of those in the room become emotional as they read out their wills
Before they are buried, participants are asked to pose for their funeral portrait
Participants enter a death experience room where they choose a coffin and put on a death robe
Course members get into their coffins and a flower is laid on each persons chest
Funeral attendants place a lid on the coffin and dirt is thrown on the casket
Participants are left in the closed casket for five minutes and some start to cry in the darkness
Once the lids are opened the resurrected trainees are asked how they felt
The well-dying craze has become an integral part of training at Samsung, which has built its own fake funeral centre
Anna Fifield gets into the spirit of things for her Fake Funeral article for the Financial Times