ABSTRACT
J. M. Kan was a civil servant within the Netherlands' Ministry of Home Affairs responsible for preparation of a bill covering the legality of cremation, formulated in 1938 and passed in 1940. There was concern that cremation was discriminated against in favour of burial in the existing Burial and Cremation Act. Accordingly, the third Kan committee published its report in 1965, proposing that cremation be made equal to burial in principle. The turn of the twenty-first century witnessed a dramatic change in funeral culture in South Korea, with a significant increase in cremation against the background of traditional burial customs. It was during the Japanese colonial period that the system of public cemeteries and the modern form of cremation were introduced. After the construction of a crematorium in Seoul in 1930, the Japanese imperialist government began to build crematoria to promote cremation as a medium of its colonial policy of obliterating traditional Korean customs.
