Editor’s Note
**Editor’s Note:** This article explores the growing trend of “gem burial” culture in urban temples, highlighted by BIA Life Science’s supply of bio-gems to Bongeunsa Temple’s Siwangjeon memorial space. The move marks the company’s official entry into the B2B bio-gem market, reflecting a modern shift in memorial practices.
BIA Life Science, a subsidiary of Boram Group, announced on the 23rd that it has supplied its bio-gem brand ‘VIA GEM’ to Siwangjeon, the memorial space at Bongeunsa Temple in Gangnam, Seoul (led by Chief Monk Wonmyeong). With this supply, BIA Life Science has officially launched its B2B bio-gem business centered around temple memorial spaces.
Bongeunsa’s Siwangjeon held its opening ceremony on the 20th and has begun full operations. It is a large-scale memorial space capable of housing up to 50,000 memorial tablets. Notably, it accommodates not only traditional wooden tablets but also bio-gem tablets, introducing a new funeral and memorial culture within a traditional temple.
Located in the heart of urban Gangnam, Seoul, Bongeunsa is a representative temple with over 1,200 years of history, founded during the reign of King Wonseong of the Silla Dynasty. It holds great symbolic significance as a memorial space not only for Buddhist devotees but also for the general public. A Bongeunsa representative stated,
BIA Life Science’s VIA GEM is a bio-gem created by extracting elements from the deceased’s biological materials, such as hair, nails, and cremated remains, and synthesizing them with gemstone raw materials. It possesses the same mineralogical properties as natural gems and is praised for its high transparency and clarity. The VIA GEM tablet combines a gemstone containing the deceased’s biological elements with a tablet form, serving as a ‘memorial gem medium’ to symbolically honor and remember the departed.
With the introduction of VIA GEM tablets to Bongeunsa’s Siwangjeon, the ‘gem burial’ culture, which offers an alternative to traditional enshrinement facilities, has been realized within an urban temple space. This is seen as a solution to the overcrowding of existing enshrinement facilities and a new memorial model integrated with religious spaces.
BIA Life Science plans to gradually expand its B2B bio-gem business by increasing cooperation with religious institutions, starting with the Buddhist community, following this supply to Siwangjeon. A company official stated,
Meanwhile, VIA GEM received a Gold Medal and a Special Award at the 2022 International Invention Fair in Geneva, Switzerland, gaining global recognition for its technological prowess and design innovation.
