Textiles, Embodiment, and Mourning in Traditional Korean Funeral Rites

This article examines the role of textiles in traditional Korean funeral rites, focusing on their material, emotional, and communal functions. It also proposes that mourning textiles should be understood as dynamic sites where personal grief and collective memory are materially embodied and negotiated. Drawing upon interdisciplinary theories of anthropology, material culture studies, embodied cognition, and affect studies, it is argued that mourning attire (sangbok) and funeral textiles (sambe) would perform a mediating role in the sensory and emotional experience of bereavement. Far from being passive coverings, mourning garments fashioned from coarse hemp would be active agents shaping their wearers’ postures, movements, tactile sensations, and emotional states. The physical discomfort induced by rough textiles would heighten epidermic self-awareness, fostering a deeper internalization of grief through enclothed cognition. The shared bearing of the funeral bier (sangyeo), supported by collective tactile engagement with textiles, would transform individual sorrow into a communally embodied ritual. Through synchronized movements, physical labor, choral singing, and exposure to the elements, mourners would experience loss not just in terms of personal anguish but also as a socially mediated event. By situating textiles at the intersection of body, emotion, and ritual, this study illustrates how material forms could scaffold emotional resilience, sustain social bonds, and enable cultural continuity in the face of death.