Seoul to add furnaces to meet soaring demand for cremation

Number of funerals to keep rising with S. Korea to become superaged society by 2025

Seoul Municipal Funeral Home (Seoul Metropolitan Government)

The Seoul Metropolitan Government on Tuesday announced a set of plans to deal with soaring cremation demand, including adding furnaces and providing extra manpower.

These measures are a response to address a deepening shortage of crematorium services, according to the Seoul city government.

Currently, the city of Seoul runs two municipal cremation facilities, including Seoul Memorial Park in Yangjae-dong and Seoul Municipal Funeral Home (Byeokje Crematorium) in Goyang, Gyeonggi Province. At those two facilities, 143 bodies per day are cremated on average, with 34 furnaces working at full capacity. However, crematorium services in Seoul are falling short of demand, city officials said.

“The demand for cremation is already difficult to meet even though the facilities have been in operation at full capacity, and it is getting more difficult to meet," an official of the city said.

"When we analyze the demand for cremation based on the number of deaths from Statistics Korea, 152 bodies per day in Seoul were needed to be cremated on average in 2023 and the figure will soar to 170 bodies per day in 2028."

To keep up with the surge in demand, the city plans to add more furnaces. It is set to install 23 “smart furnaces” by 2026. These furnaces use information technology to maintain steady combustion conditions, shortening the cremation time from 120 to 100 minutes.

The city is also set to provide extra manpower so that those two facilities would extend operating time by two hours a day.

“The Seoul Metropolitan Government will strive to meet soaring cremation demand as South Korea is predicted to become a superaged society in 2025,” said Jung Sang-hoon, head of the Welfare Policy Office.

More than 90 percent of people who die in South Korea are cremated, government data showed.

According to Ministry of Health and Welfare data submitted to Rep. Nam In-soon of the ruling Democratic Party of Korea, the bodies of 287,704 people, or 90.5 percent, of the 317,774 people who reportedly died in 2021 were cremated. The rate of cremation has risen steadily from 79.2 percent in 2014, according to the data.

By Lee Jaeeun(jenn@heraldcorp.com)