Death and the activities and beliefs surrounding it can teach us much about the ideals and cultures of the living. While biologically death is an end to physical life, this break is not quite so apparent in its mental and spiritual aspects. Indeed, the influence of the dead over the living is sometimes much greater than before death. This volume takes a multidisciplinary approach in an effort to provide a fuller understanding of both historic and contemporary practices linked with death in Korea. -- Jacket.

Considerations on death in the Korean context / Michael J. Pettid and Charlotte Horlyck -- Death and burial in medieval Korea: the Buddhist legacy / Sem Vermeersch -- Making death "modern": reevaluating the patient's body, transforming medical practice, and reforming public health at Seoul National University Hospital, 1957-1977 / John P. DiMoia -- Ways of burial in Koryŏ times / Charlotte Horlyck -- Death as a nationalist text: reading the national cemetery of South Korea / Guy Podoler -- Shamanic rites for the dead in Chosŏn Korea / Michael J. Pettid -- The familiar dead: the creation of an intimate afterlife in early Chosŏn Korea / Milan Hejtmanek -- Ghostly encounters: perceptions of death and the afterlife in Koryŏ and early Chosŏn / Michael J. Pettid -- Buddhism and death in Kim Man-jung's A nine cloud dream: from fact to fiction, and nowhere back again / Gregory N. Evon -- Dying for heaven: persecution, martyrdom, and family in the early Korean Catholic Church / Franklin Rausch.