Special Guest: Ron Chang
Korean graves do not always stay where you put them. In this episode, Ron Chang joins us to talk about what it is really like to exhume and relocate family graves in Korea. Ron recently moved the graves of his grandmother and grandfather from a remote mountain cemetery in Yangju to the special North Korean heritage cemetery near Paju.
We talk about Korean exhumation culture, pungsu, why graves get moved, and what actually happens on the day a burial mound is opened. Ron walks us through the whole thing: the paperwork, the tools, the shock of what you find underground, and the strange mix of duty, sadness, sweat and family logistics that define Korean memorial life.
If you have ever wondered how Korea handles the dead, this is your backstage pass.
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Credits
Produced by Joe McPherson and Shawn Morrissey
Music by Soraksan
Top Tier Patrons
Angel Earl
Joel Bonomini
Devon Hiphner
Gabi Palomino
Steve Marsh
Eva Sikora
Ron Chang
Hunter Winter
Cecilia Löfgren Dumas
Ashley Wright
Edward Bradford
Boram Yoon
Chad Struhs
Stewart MacMillan
Louise Dreisig
Moving the Dead: Ron’s Story of Exhumation and Family Duty in Korea
Korea has a long relationship with the dead. Ancestors are not abstract ideas. They sit in the landscape. They live in the soil. They look over the living. And sometimes, they have to be moved.
In this episode of the Dark Side of Seoul Podcast, our friend and guide Ron Chang shares the experience of relocating his grandparents’ graves. Both passed in the 1980s and were buried in a remote cemetery in Yangju. It was beautiful back then. Quiet. Mountain air. But time changes everything. The cemetery became harder to reach. The mounds needed constant repair. And the family changed, too. There were fewer people left who could tend the graves.
So the decision was made. Move them.
Ron takes us through the cultural side first. Grave moving is not unusual in Korea. Families do it for many reasons. Pungsu, the Korean feng shui tradition, is a major one. If the land feels wrong or the energy changes after development, families trust the terrain more than paperwork. Another reason is practicality. Some graves are simply too remote. Modern life does not always allow for mountain hikes with weeding tools and offerings.
Ron’s family had a more personal reason as well. His aunt’s parents, who came from the northern provinces, were buried in Donghwa Gyeongmo Park near Imjingak. Only families with North Korean roots can be buried there. Ron’s uncle is buried there, and when the time comes, his aunt will join him. Ron’s grandparents qualified as in-laws. It made sense to bring everyone to the same place.
The physical process was something else entirely.
Three workers arrived with shovels, axes and tools Ron had never seen before. The soil had hardened over decades. Removing the mounds took almost an hour. Then the deeper digging began. Reaching each coffin took hours. The workers eventually tore open the top of the coffin and removed the remains by hand. Ron describes the moment with a kind of shocked respect.
He remembers finding his grandmother’s gold necklace. His grandfather’s watch and glasses. These small, quiet artifacts of a life.
The remains were boxed, carried down the mountain and driven to the crematorium. Then the ashes were brought home for a night before being placed in special cupboards at Donghwa Gyeongmo Park. Once sealed, those cupboards cannot be opened for twenty years. Families attach photos or letters on the doors. No rituals. No jesa. No bowing to a mound in the wind.
Ron said the whole process was solemn but meaningful. It reminded him how central the dead remain in Korean family life. The living change homes, cities and careers. The dead move more slowly, but they move too.
And Korea makes space for them.
