• Journal of the Korean association of regional geographers
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• v.20 no.4
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• pp.425-443
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• 2014

The subjects of this research are two-folds. First, it investigates the ways in which previous geographic studies have approached to human death and its spatial representations through various theoretical frames. It is found that necrogeographies on cemetery have changed into those studies focusing on the social and spatial contexts in which deathscapes are represented. Second, this research analyzes what institutional discourses have intervened in excluding or including modern deathscapes in Korea. Some discourses socio-spatially excluded specific (undesirable) deathscape, and they mostly depended on employing such terms as 'Yeoido' and 'illegal, luxury, or deserted cemeteries'. On the contrary, other discourses employed such terms as 'developed country', 'Unified-Silla Dynasty', and 'NIMBY', and they introduced new (desirable) types of deathscapes such as cremation. This paper conclusively argues that these discourses engendered 'truth effect' so as to introduce and promote specific deathscapes while repressing pre-modern (or conventional) deasthscapes and concealing discursive contradictions.