Thanks to the generous support from the Korea Institute, the summer of 2023 has been a fruitful one as I could conduct pre-dissertation research for my doctoral project in South Korea. The objective of my summer research this year was to explore the landscapes and institutions of unclaimed (muyŏn'go) death-management in contemporary South Korea, focusing on the Seoul/ Kyŏnggi area with a comparative take against Japan. The Korean part of the trip was generously funded by the KI Graduate Summer Research Travel Grant, granting me the opportunity to explore important landmarks and potential field sites pertaining to my research topic as well as the opportunity to conduct preliminary interviews.
My stay in Korea involved visiting multiple spaces of memorial, not only for the unclaimed but also for the claimed for the purpose of comparison. In Hwasŏng, I visited a Buddhist temple called Yongjusa to take a look at the memorial tablets and the costs for enshrinement, then moved to Hwasŏng Hambaeksan Memorial Park which is a recently-built funeral/memorial facility for six municipal governments in Kyŏnggi-do. I found that the muyŏn'go room of the charnel house was off-limits to the general public unlike the other rooms, but was able to take a quick look inside under the permission of a staff. I also paid a visit to the Yongmiri Memorial Park in P’aju where the unclaimed bodies from Seoul are mass-stored and mass-buried. After wandering in a sea of graves for a couple of hours, I finally came across a gray warehouse for muyŏn'go cremains, securely locked and standing alone at the foot of the mountain without a sign. Unfortunately, neither I nor the local staff could locate the collective burial site where the stored cremains are supposed to go after five years of storage. Around the end of my project, I also had a chance to visit the headquarters of a muyŏn'go funeral-related NGO in Seoul and conducted an interview with one of the core members. The interview provided valuable insights into the organization’s history and activities as well as the current systems and details of death-management in Seoul, which could only be learnt by talking to an insider.
Overall, the experiences I had during the summer helped me grasp and tangibly experience the realities of muyŏn'go death-management in contemporary South Korea. The visits, explorations, interactions, and conversations did not only answer some of the initial curiosities I had about the research topic but opened up room for further inquiries in terms of accessibility, administrative processes, the funeral law, and the feasibility of fieldwork itself. These questions will help me re-organize the themes I want to look into for the next academic year as I prepare myself for more concentrated fieldwork with further specified research questions. I express my sincere gratitude to my professors and the Korea Institute for allowing me this wonderful opportunity and supporting my growth as a student and a researcher.