Lunar New Year during pandemic: how ancestral rituals are performed online

올 설 연휴, 온 가족 모이지 못해도 온라인 성묘로 조상 찾아뵙기 During the Lunar New Year, families traditionally come together and perform a ritual to honor their ancestors. But due to COVID-19, coming together won't be possible this year. So there's now a new trend of performing ancestral rituals online. Our Kim Yeon-seung reports. Koreans traditionally start the Lunar New Year by visiting the final resting place of their deceased family members. The whole family comes together to perform a traditional ritual in honor of their ancestors. "This is the ritual room where visitors come to pay their respects to their loved ones. Now, if you see inside, on that table over there, visitors would usually lay food on the table as an offering to their ancestors and burn incense to connect with the world beyond." But not this year. "Eunhasoo Memorial Park will close down during the Lunar New Year holiday. The ritual room is also shut down for about a month due to COVID-19." Most memorial parks in South Korea have taken similar measures to prevent visitors during the pandemic. But this doesn't mean that the traditional values of honoring ancestors have been lost. "As family gatherings are no longer possible due to COVID-19, there's now a new culture of performing ancestral rituals online." This online service provides a recent picture of the ancestor's burial site. It also fills in for the actual ritual by providing these realistic illustrations of a ritual table. People can pick which food or flowers they wish to lay on the table. Users can also share the link with others,... so that families can perform the ritual simultaneously even when they are apart. Seoul Crematorium is providing another online service to remember the dead. They have something called the 'post office to the world beyond.' Here, people post letters to their loved ones and say whatever they didn't get a chance to say before. Kim Yeon-seung, Arirang News #Lunar_New_Year #online #ancestor 📣 Arirang News(Facebook) :   / arirangtvnews   📣 Arirang News(Twitter) :   / arirangtvnews   📣 News Center(YouTube) :    / newscenter_arirangtv   2021-02-05, 07:00 (KST)