Turning Ashes Into Colorful Beads

Faced with a diminishing availability of burial space and a new law that requires anyone burying their dead to remove the grave after 60 years, South Koreans are looking at a new way to honor their dead relatives after cremation.

For about $900, a company called Bonhyang is taking the ashes of the deceased and transforming them into shiny, colorful beads. The beads are typically displayed on dishes or inside glass containers and kept close to the family.

In Confucian South Korea, visiting the grave site of elders had been a regular practice for generations. But by the late 1990s, when the nation acknowledged its shortage of buildable land, cremation slowly became more popular. Ten years ago, six out of 10 South Koreans were buried traditionally. Last year, seven in 10 were cremated.

With a South Korean population of nearly 50 million, the trend to choose cremation led Bonhyang's founder, Bae Jae-yul, to perfect a method of transforming sullen ashes into cherished beads.

The ashes-to-beads process takes about two hours. The ashes are ground inside a special machine into a fine powder, which is then heated and shaped into beads. "The color and density of the beads vary from person to person," Bae told the Los Angeles Times. Finished colors range from coral and topaz to gray and black.

"You don’t feel that these beads are creepy or scary," Bae said. "In fact, there’s a holiness and warmth to them."

Bae remembered one client who didn't want to burden his children with overseeing the tomb where their grandparents were kept. So he razed the grave and created a collection of beads with the mixed remains of both parents. Now the beads are kept at home, where they're accessible to the whole family, according to the LA Times.

Park Tae-ho, chief researcher at the Korea National Council for Cremation Promotion, told the Associated Press that the "death bead" concept has yet to take hold in the U.S. despite a few unsuccessful business startups. It seems like it might take a while before Americans warm up to this new phenomenon.