Korean Studies
Internet Discussion List

KOREAN STUDIES REVIEW

 

Gil Soo Han, Health and Medicine under Capitalism: Korean Immigrants in Australia Cranbury, New Jersey: Associated University Presses, 2000. 292 pages $48.50 (cloth). ISBN: 0-8386-3849-X.

Reviewed by Donald Baker
University of British Columbia

 

 

As anyone who has observed Korea over the last few decades has surely noticed, in the second half of the twentieth century South Korea experienced an incredibly rapid and radical transformation. Urbanization and industrialization have changed not only where Koreans live and work, but how they worship, what they eat and wear, and what they do in their leisure time. Nevertheless, even though modernization has affected almost every aspect of Korean society, elements of tradition persist. In some cases, traditional culture has found modernization a fertilizer and grown even stronger. One example would be the popularity of p'ungmul among university students. Another would be the renewed vitality of traditional Oriental medicine (hanbang) among the swelling urban population.

Tradition maintains healthy even among Koreans outside of Korea. Gil Soo Han has studied one such expatriate Korean community in Australia. His research has focused on the health strategies those Koreans have adopted in their new home. Not surprisingly, he finds that they continue to seek medical assistance from practitioners of traditional Oriental medicine as well as from physicians of modern biomedicine. In fact, he found more hanbang specialists among the Koreans in Sydney (12) than Korean-speaking physicians of biomedicine (8). He also found the same division of labor between hanbang and modern medicine which can be found in South Korea today: Koreans both in Sydney and in Seoul tend to use hanbang prescriptions for general physical weakness and chronic complaints. They tend to turn to biomedicine when faced with an acute ailment. In other words, he found, Koreans avail themselves of the restorative powers of hanbang to complement the curative powers of biomedicine.

Han found that it made no difference how long his subjects had lived in Australia or how much formal education they had received. Trust in hanbang was found in all sectors of the Australian Korean community, despite the fact that heath problems varied among the three main groups of immigrants he studied.

Immigrants who had entered Australia illegally but later gained legal status through a government amnesty tend to have few mental problems but suffer from many physical ailments because of the demanding physical labor required by the only jobs available to them in Australia. Immigrants who had entered Australia legally because they possessed a technical skill Australia needed often found themselves working in physically punishing jobs similar to those held by amnesty immigrants. In addition, those skilled immigrants often suffer from depression because the skills they brought with them to Australia did not win them the income and status they had expected. The third group, investment immigrants who had won the right to move to Australia because of the large amount of money they brought with them, tend not to have as many physical ailments, since they spend most of their time fishing and playing gold, but they too suffer from depression, probably from boredom and from the stress of daily encounters with an unfamiliar culture.

Despite their differences, all three groups turned to hanbang restorative medicine when they could afford it. Enough could afford it that, according to Han, there are even two deer parks near Sydney to provide an expensive tonic favored among Koreans who feel run down: deer blood mixed with whiskey.

Han's description of the health strategies of Koreans in Australia, and his argument that their original culture continues to influence their pursuit of health even though they now live and work far away from their homeland, is convincing, with one caveat. All of his subjects are adult males. He did not look at the medical beliefs and practices of Korean women in Australia. Since in a Korean household it is often the wife rather than the husband who decides when a member of a family needs medical intervention, and also decides what form that medical intervention should take, that is a significant omission. The absence of input from wives and mothers may have skewed the data on which he bases his analysis of which forms of medical treatment Korean men in Australia feel most comfortable with.

Another curious feature of Han's informative study is hinted at in his title. After several chapters describing the medical problems Korean men face in Australia and the medical strategies they adopt to preserve or regain their health, he concludes that they are looking for health in the wrong places. Rather than relying solely on the short-term benefits medicine can bring, they should instead strive for more long-term benefits by challenging the capitalist labor system which places them under so much physical and mental stress. His prescription for "a reorganization of the workplace and a humanization of labor" is enticing, but his data fails to support the implication that a less capitalist work environment would have substantial health benefits.

Nevertheless, Han has produced a useful and insightful study, one with relevance far beyond the field of Korean-Australian studies. All those interested in cultural change and the persistence of tradition, as well as all those interested in Korean society and culture both on the peninsula and in expatriate communities around the globe, will find his examination of the small Korean community in Sydney well worth reading. This is Han's second study of Koreans in Australia. The first analyzed the rapid growth of the Christian church among Koreans there. I don't know what the subject of his next book will be, but I expect it will be as interesting, informative, and thought-provoking as the first two have.

Citation:
Baker, Donald 2001
Review of Gil Soo Han, Health and Medicine under Capitalism: Korean Immigrants in Australia (2000)
Korean Studies Review 2001, no. 1
Electronic file: http://koreanstudies.com/ks/ksr/ksr01-01.htm


Return to Index of Reviews

Return to Entry Page