Abstract
This paper aims at examining the historical background and the social implications of “public cemeteries” in Korea. The colonial government of Japan introduced such cemeteries to Korean society in 1912, and the post-independence Korean government also has been promoting the similar policy, especially since the 1970s. The purpose of those policies was to control the location and size of cemeteries for land use planning.
In Jeju province, the biggest island of Korea, graves traditionally located by Pungsu (Feng-sui), and it did not mattar whether the burying place was on burier’s own land or not. However, from the 1980s, local residents started to use maul cemeteries built in the 1970s. This change was due to the shortage of space for burial land, because the expansion of citrus cultivation as well as the introduction of tourism changed the agricultural land use system and increased the price of land.
In the death study, scholars have proposed a hypothesis that the modernization of any societies is accompanied by the concealment of death. This hypothesis could apply to the development process of public cemeteries in Jeju province. However, this process occurred not only by the government policies implying the concealment of death but also by the changed conditions on land use, which force residents to use cemeteries separated from their settlement.
