'Daughters can't be chief mourners?' Actor Ko Ah-sung speaks out on funeral gender bias

Actor Ko Ah-sung has spoken out about the unfair treatment she experienced as a woman during her mother's funeral.

A video titled "A daughter empathy talk — city women who laughed along and then suddenly burst into tears" was posted Monday on the YouTube channel Yeouido Yuktoiclub.

In the video, Ko was joined by Minumsa editor Kim Min-kyung and creator Charles Enter for a conversation centered on stories shared by daughters.

The group discussed an account posted online in which a woman wrote that her father had died suddenly and, with no male family members, she had placed a man she had recently met on a blind date in the role of chief mourner — his name even appearing in the funeral hall's official listing.

As the other participants expressed shock that a man with no connection to the deceased had been installed as chief mourner simply because there were no male relatives, Ko said, "I've been through this myself," and shared her own experience.

Ko lost her father in childhood and her mother in 2021. "We are three sisters, and when our mother passed away, there was a huge fuss that there was no one to be chief mourner," she said.

When Kim asked whether her mother had also had no brothers, Ko said her mother did have an uncle but that they were not close. "People around us said a man had to serve as chief mourner at a funeral, so we thought we had to do the same," she recalled.

She went on to say that in the confusion of the moment, they seated the uncle in the chief mourner's position, but he was removed after just one day. "'That's fine, we don't need one.' Ultimately, all three sisters did it together," she said.

Ko said the experience showed that everything was possible without a male chief mourner. "I didn't think it could be done, but it all worked out," she said.

She also expressed frustration at seeing people who had not been close to her mother taking on ceremonial roles. "It really made me angry — people who had nothing to do with my mom carrying her portrait or serving as pallbearers," she said. "Women can actually do all of those things too. It just seems like it happens that way because of long-standing custom."

While the role of chief mourner was traditionally reserved for men in Korea, funeral culture has been shifting, with daughters, wives and other women increasingly taking on the role.

paq@heraldcorp.com