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The survival of Sherpa Dawa, who went missing at an altitude of 7,200m in what is known as Everest's "Death Zone," is a miraculous case that truly tested the limits of human survival. With his oxygen tank empty and isolated within a crevasse, he survived for six days in a desperate situation facing death, subsisting on chocolate scraps and ice. While his family held a funeral ceremony in Kathmandu to honor his death, he displayed superhuman vitality, rising from the snow piled up by an avalanche and making a desperate descent. Experts agreed that his survival at an altitude where it would be impossible under normal circumstances would never have been possible without the unique, robust physical strength and mental fortitude of a Sherpa.

However, in contrast to the moving news of survival that reminds us of the dignity of life, our society's institutional funerals remain lost and wandering. Blood-centric funeral culture is failing to keep pace with the changing times, characterized by the rise of single-person households and the birth of diverse communities. The reality that those who are not blood relatives must resort to extreme legal measures like adoption or marriage registration just to watch over each other's final moments starkly shows how much our legal system restricts an individual's right to self-determination after death. The administrative process of waiting a month to confirm an unclaimed death just to be recognized as a funeral organizer is a facet of a failed system that inflicts further pain on the bereaved who must let their loved ones go.

Meanwhile, in Daegu, a symbolic performance called a "Democracy Funeral" was held to condemn poor election management. The controversy over mismanagement, including a shortage of ballots and the simultaneous conduct of voting and counting during the June 3 local elections, became the fuse that drove even the winners to the streets. Claiming that this went beyond simple administrative error and that the voting rights of the electorate were fundamentally infringed, they declared the death of democracy while wearing black clothes and funeral armbands. The sight of winners, not losers, demanding a re-election and laying flowers suggests how deep the anger is over the violation of the procedural sublimity of democracy, rather than just the election results themselves.

The democracy funeral protest site also exhibited complex aspects, with some political extremism and election distrust mixed in. The claims of those who went beyond distrusting the election commission to using the vote counts of specific candidates as evidence of a rigged election prove how deep and fragmented our society's conflict structure is. As controversial political figures from the past attended the protest and some citizens raised baseless suspicions, the essential purpose of the rally—the "restoration of procedural fairness"—tended to fade somewhat. This remains a case study showing how legitimate criticism of institutional flaws can combine with political agitation to exacerbate social chaos.

Ultimately, the miracle on Everest and the funeral in Daegu ask us about the "value of things unseen." A person returning from what was thought to be death is a miracle of physical life, but the democracy funeral symbolizes the mental death a community experiences when its institutional system loses trust. Just as the isolated mountaineer held onto a rope to descend, our society also needs a new order to escape the crevasses of old blood-centric customs and technical errors in election management. Unless we secure "fixed ropes"—such as inclusive laws that guarantee post-mortem self-determination and a transparent election system that anyone can trust—we will have no choice but to wander endlessly in the death zone.