Woman dies in coffin during cult ‘luck’ rite

A SOUTH KOREAN woman who was meant to be sleeping in a coffin as part of a spiritual ritual intended to bring her good fortune, suffocated inside the sealed casket.

The woman, who has not been identified but was reportedly in her 40s, was taking part in a therapeutic ceremony which required her to spend the night in a wooden coffin, in the belief that it would rid her of bad spirits and bring her better luck.

Three women got into coffins at around 8pm on Thursday, in an apartment in Gumi, a city in the central region of South Korea, local police told the Yonhap news agency.

The two survivors told police that the woman who died tried to get out of her coffin after about two hours, complaining that she could not breathe and that it was too hot. She was persuaded to carry on with the rite by her friends, who told her to endure the discomfort. At around 6.30am, one of the other women woke and lifted the lids of the coffins to find one of her friends sleeping soundly but the other woman dead.

A police officer investigating the case told The Korea Times that the coffin was airtight and that the woman had apparently not noticed.

Investigators also said the women were members of a “pseudo religion”, one of a remarkable number of such cults that have popped up in South Korea in recent years promising to solve all sorts of personal, spiritual or financial problems through unconventional forms of worship.

Police said that a post-mortem examination would be carried out, but the results have not yet been released.

An official said that the extreme heat affecting the entire Korean Peninsula in recent weeks – daytime temperatures have hovered around 104F (40C) and the nights are only a few degrees cooler – may have contributed to the woman’s death.