VOLUNTEERS TIDYING GRAVE SITES

[Anchor Lead]

Tidying up grave sites is oftentimes an annual chore that takes much time and effort. But here are some kindhearted volunteers who mow the grass and clear the weeds out around the graves of people who are not even their own ancestors. Let's take a look.

[Pkg]

Early morning silence in the mountain is broken by a loud buzzing sound. A few sweeps of a weed cutter reveal the grave mounds hidden under overgrown grass and weeds. It's been 2 weeks since the Chuseok holiday. Around 130 members of the Jeju Saemaeul Leaders Council volunteered to tidy up untended graves. These graves belong to people with no family or descendants. They even worked on the graves of descendants who could not visit this year due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

[Soundbite] AHN CHANG-JUN(CHAIR, JEJU SAEMAEUL LEADERS COUNCIL) : "People used to say that descendants prosper only when the graves are well tended. We are doing this for those who don't have any descendants or live too far away to do this chore."

Overall, they tended to some 1,400 graves in a single day. The volunteers carry out this task every year, so there's a greater sense of attachment and responsibility. It has already been 27 years since the members of the Saemaeul Leaders Council started cleaning up abandoned graves. Once the job is done, they hold a joint memorial service. They set up a simple offering table and pay respect. They are essentially filling in for the descendants who are unable to visit their ancestors' graves.

[Soundbite] JANG JEONG-SIK(JEJU SAEMAEUL LEADERS IDO-2 DONG COUNCIL) : "Coming here early in the morning was hard, but seeing the clean graves makes it all worthwhile."

The volunteer work that started as a way to remember the dead has now developed into a charity project for local communities.