Posted on 01/04/2010 2:45:47 PM PST by Steelfish
South Koreans Experience What It's Like To Die -- and Live Again
Across South Korea, entrepreneurs are holding controversial forums aimed at teaching clients how to better appreciate life by simulating death. They use mortality as a personal motivator. People lie in caskets at the Coffin Academy, during a controversial seminar that uses death as inspiration for character improvement. Clients pay $25 for a four-hour course that ends with them lying for 10 minutes in a closed coffin. [Pic in URL]
John M. Glionna
January 4, 2010
Reporting from Daejeon, South Korea - For Jung Joon, the moment of truth arrives for his clients as they slip into the casket and he pounds the lid in place with a wooden hammer.
Insights arise, he says, as they are confronted with total, claustrophobic darkness, left alone to weigh their regrets and ponder eternity.
Jung, a slight 39-year-old with an undertaker's blue suit and a preacher's demeanor, is a resolute counselor on the ever-after who welcomes clients with the invitation, "OK, today let's get close to death."
Jung runs a seminar called the Coffin Academy, where, for $25 each, South Koreans can get a glimpse into the abyss. Over four hours, groups of a dozen or more tearfully write their letters of goodbye and tombstone epitaphs. Finally, they attend their own funerals and try the coffin on for size.
In a candle-lighted chapel, each climbs into one of the austere wooden caskets laid side by side on the floor. Lying face up, their arms crossed over their chests, they close their eyes. And there they rest, for 10 excruciating minutes.
"It's a way to let go of certain things," says Jung, a former insurance company lecturer. "Afterward, you feel refreshed. You're ready to start your life all over this time with a...
(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com ...
"Many firms here see the sessions as an inventive way to stimulate productivity. The Kyobo insurance company, for example, has required all 4,000 of its employees to attend fake funerals like those offered by Jung."
Doing something like that would be my worst possible nightmare. It’d scare the hell of out me like nothing else could.
I’ll take a major pass on this!
ROFL!
hey slip into the casket and he pounds the lid in place with a wooden hammer.
So death is like getting into a coffin, listening to a hammer, and lying there for 10 minutes?
Huh - I thought it was worse than that.
Or better than that. All depends on how you lived ;-)
We’re living under a messiah who thinks with a teleprompter. We’re already dead and in hell...
>>So death is like getting into a coffin, listening to a hammer, and lying there for 10 minutes?<<
That explains my first wife...
It’s when they throw dirt on the lid that you start
getting worried. I know.
with Obamacare’s arrival, we’ll all get to have this.
So if I am planning to be creamated should I just stick my hand on a burner, use $10 to buy some salve and pain killers and pocket the remainder?
No thanks... on the knees in open air where God can see works much better for washing the soul.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.