Actor Go Ah-sung revealed that when her mother passed away, she and her two sisters personally served as the chief mourners.
On July 6, the Neighbors' Husbands YouTube channel released the final episode of 'City Women Shelter'. In the video, Go Ah-sung spoke with publishing editor Kim Min-kyung and YouTuber Charles Enter about the lives of daughters across Korea.
The three read online submissions and discussed Korea’s rites-of-passage culture, including weddings and funerals. One story said a father died suddenly, and because the family had only daughters, the man the daughter had just met on a blind date was made the chief mourner. Hearing this, Charles Enter reacted, saying, "It makes no sense to set a blind date guy as the chief mourner."
Go Ah-sung then said, "I’m speaking from experience," recalling her own bereavement. "My mother passed away, and our father wasn’t in the picture. We’re three sisters, and when Mom died, people kicked up a fuss saying there couldn’t be a chief mourner because there wasn’t a man."
People around them insisted a man had to be installed as the chief mourner at the funeral hall, and amid the chaos, she thought that was the norm. Go Ah-sung explained, "We had an uncle, but we weren’t that close. Still, because everyone said that’s how it should be, we seated my uncle as the chief mourner."
But the uncle fell far short of expectations. Go Ah-sung said, "My uncle got fired after just one day as chief mourner. We said, 'It’s fine — we don’t need him,'" confessing that the three sisters ultimately handled the entire funeral themselves. She emphasized, "You can do everything without a man. I thought we couldn’t, but we absolutely could."
Meanwhile, Go Ah-sung lost her mother in July 2021. She is the youngest of three sisters.