New tradition for Korean mourners

For many Koreans, the image of ashes-to-ashes, dust-to-dust just seems like unfinished burial business. Death beads, they say, are a thing of beauty. The new idea of death beads is that one could pay to put a loved one‘s ashes into a few handfuls of tiny bluish beads, which are not meant to be strung into a necklace. Instead, some mourners keep them in dishes and glass containers, the point being to keep a lost loved one close by.

However, the beads are not without their critics, who insist that they dishonor the dead by needlessly manipulating human remains.

Bae Jae-yul, founder and CEO of the “death bead” firm Bonhyang, says he’s served more than 1,000 customers in 10 years. He remembers one client who did not want to burden his children with overseeing the tomb where their grandparents were kept. Therefore, he razed the grave and created a group of beads with the mixed remains of both parents. Now the beads are kept at home, where they are accessible to the whole family.

Some have called the new idea a great one, as many mourning families have found themselves looking at very expensive pricing in an already limited spacing for graves.

Nearly 70% of those who died in 2010 were cremated, nearly twice the percentage only a decade before, according to government statistics. Whereas some South Koreans bury the ashes, most store them in mausoleums.

Now with a burgeoning population, and a growing sentiment to keep families close, some expect the industry of death beading to stay around for the next few generations.

(아주경제 앤드류 이 기자)

Park Sae-jin swatchsjp@ajunews.com