Cultural Awareness Project
By: Hallie Le
Korean Major Health Concept
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Health may be viewed as finding harmony between complementary energies such as cold and hot, female and male and dark and light. These forces are called “yin and yang.”
beliefs and causes of illness
- They don't meet their spiritual being's expectation of them (like Christianity, etc.)
- Failure to pray to ancestor
- Failure to keep their emotions from being expressed openly as traditionally required
- Displeases spirits like fox spirit
Traditional/Methods of Treatment
- Acupuncture
- Herbs
- Cupping
- Moxibustion
- Aromatherapy
- Meditation
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traditional_Korean_medicine
Beliefs on child birth
- Once the pregnant women finds out she is pregnant there is a certain order of whom she tells first. She must tell the mother-in-law first. Then she tells her husband and then her own mother.
- It is believed that eating certain foods makes childbirth harder such as: crab, squid, eggs, and peaches.
- The Korean preference is for male children to carry on the family lineage.
- It is important to remain clean during pregnancy. Avoid touching urine, feces, dead things or the killing of animals.
- If you dream of flowers when you are pregnant, it is believed you will have a boy. if you dream of fruit it will be a girl.
- Pregnant women often wear loose clothing because they want to keep the baby comfortable.
Beliefs on practices death
- A person's corpse stays in the house before the funeral based on the season. Summer they stay in for 3 days. Winter 7 days
- Before the funeral the women cook all day for an offering to send the love one off.
- When a person is mourning they wear white, but only if they are for their parents death
- Before burying the dead they out a white bow honoring the person that died
Korean religion
- For Buddhism they pray to the god by burning incense, by doing this they send their wishes to god.
- For Christianity they read from the holy bible and they pray.