Cremation and natural burials shift South Korea’s funeral culture

With cremation replacing traditional funeral practice, and the number of deaths increasing due to an aging population, columbariums nationwide are reaching full capacity. The outdoor wall-mounted enshrinement facility at Suwon City Yeonhwa Funeral Hall in Yeongtong, Suwon, Gyeonggido, is nearly maxed out./ Go Un-ho

Elderly Son, who passed in early January from a heart attack, was cremated; her ashes were scattered in a man-made lake. Despite her family’s wishes for her ashes to remain in a columbarium for family visits, she wanted to “return to nature after being cremated.”

South Korea is seeing a break from traditional funeral methods. In May of 2025, the Seoul National University Office of Research Affairs and R&DB Foundation (SNU R&DB) conducted an online panel survey of 1,000 people above the age of 19 domestically. Results showed that the top preferred method of funeral procedures was natural burial after cremation (30%). In second place was being kept in a columbarium (26.7%), and burial funerals received 6.2% of the votes. Of those surveyed, 17.4% were unsure how they would like their funeral to be processed. When SNU R&DB conducted the same survey back in 2021, the first and second options were flipped—columbariums first (28.8%) and cremation before natural burial second (23%). Trends have changed in the past four years.

Graphics by Lee Jin-young

Natural burials began receiving more attention when former chairperson of LG Group Koo Bon-moo passed away in May 2018. Chairman Koo had wanted to be buried beneath his favorite pine tree in Hwadamsup, an arboretum in Gwangju. This choice helped gain the attention of many individuals and is thought of as a core reason behind natural burials’ rise in popularity.

Recently, the government has also stepped in to promote natural burials. Authorities changed the approval process for natural burial sites from a permit-based system to a notification-based one, allowing public institutions to lease land to create more sites. This decision has contributed to the steady expansion of natural burials. Beginning in January 2025, scattering ashes in oceans or mountains was legalized.

South Korea has a long history of being a post-burial society. According to the Ministry of Health and Welfare, cremation rates stood at a provisional 93.9% as of March this year. In the 2000s, the rate was smaller—20–30%. In the modern world, 9 out of 10 people decide to be cremated, breaking away from a long-standing tradition. Fifty-four-year-old Do, who lives in South Gyeongsang, recently cremated his in-law after their passing. Although the family had legacy land, every single relative had been cremated since 1999.

Reasons for choosing natural burials are varied, but the biggest reason is that people “don’t want to become a burden even in death.” Others explained that “our generation can tend to ancestral graves, but we don’t want to pass that responsibility on to our children.” In addition, many burial sites are situated in rural areas, which are far from children living in metropolitan Seoul. Smaller families may feel strained by the added responsibility of visiting during important days. Kwon, aged 56, who cremated his father this January, said, “Cremation felt cleaner than burial, and arrangements took less time than finding a burial plot.”

Land serving as burial plots is also running out. Many memorial parks have long since sold out their land and are no longer accepting new burials. A team leader at a memorial park in Pyeongtaek, Gyeonggi-do, said, “All three of our cemeteries have reached full capacity. We can only accept exhumations for cremation or relocation. There’s just no space for new burials.”