Crawling maggots, swarms of flies. Bodily fluids and rotting flesh. When Kim Sae-byoul goes to work in his black hazmat suit, he often faces the aftermath of one of South Korea’s most morbid trends: lonely deaths. 

Kim is among an increasing number of cleaners paid by grieving families or desperate landlords to remove any traces of death from a property within which its occupant has died, often alone and unnoticed by neighbors or loved ones for days.