By Kim Si-deok, Director of the Exhibition Materials Division in the National Museum of Korean Contemporary History’s construction bureau.

Among the economic indicators for South Korea is something called the "ancestral rite price." It refers to the cost of food for ancestral rites as reported when the two major holidays of Lunar New Year and Chuseok come around each year. These articles, which have never been skipped for even one year, provide proof that ancestral rites are a key characteristic of Korean culture and help explain the Republic of Korea.

In South Korea, the reason given by feminists for opposing the ancestral ceremony is the "forced labor of women" in preparing the ancestral dishes. They say that women have been belittled since the Joseon era because of a male-dominated society, and that the ancestral service is a bad custom that does nothing but impose labor on women. But the Joseon era was a time when, in accordance with the principle of yin and yang, women were not allowed to work in the fields because of the difficulty of the labor. The eldest daughter-in-law held tremendous responsibilities and status as the person who oversaw the household economy and accounting.
Ancestral rites are, in the broad sense, about dedicating an offering to transcendent beings and expressing sincerity. In Korea, the practice of honoring and remembering ancestors has been regarded as a memorial ceremony since the Joseon era. It is a cultural practice that compels us to look back on our origins, the foundation for our existence. The fact that these rites have been dismissed as an old-fashioned custom that should be done away with is because of the indiscriminate borrowing of the Japanese-style academic term "ancestor worship."


The biggest obstacle to the ancestral rite in modern society is the culture of complaint. "Why do I have to honor ancestors whose faces I don't even recognize?" people ask. "The ritual and the table setting are too complicated!" "It's a pain in the neck just remembering the dates." This is the phenomenon that results when students, however much they may learn about etiquette in school, are never taught about the proprieties that determine human behavior and when the ancestral ceremony becomes excessively formalized.


The ancestral service speaks through sincerity, not form. Because Confucianism became Korea's cultural tradition, the ancestral rites followed the Confucian style and became entrenched through a cultural tradition of formalities. If we can simply preserve the original meaning of the ancestral service in today's multi-religious society, then any style would be fine, even if it is not necessarily the Confucian one.


Violence in schools and among young people is a serious problem today. The reason is said to be a vicious cycle stemming from physical abuses experienced at home. In traditional societies, ancestral rituals are occasions for character education, where siblings and relatives gather to learn intimately about the family history and order.

Traditional culture represents the biggest weapon and strategy in the culture war that was declared with the start of the 21st century. Now is a time when we should be reinterpreting the DNA of the proud cultural tradition that allowed us to exist from the perspective of the present. This is the answer to the question, "Do we really need the ancestral rites?"

The views presented in this column are the writer’s own, and do not necessarily reflect those of The Hankyoreh.