[KS] KSR 2001-01: _Health and Medicine under Capitalism_

[Stephen Epstein]

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

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 been.


Citation:
Baker, Donald 2001
Review of Gil Soo Han, _Health and Medicine under Capitalism: Korean
Immigrants in Australia_,(2000)
_Korean Studies Review_ 2001, no. 01
Electronic file: http://www.iic.edu/thelist/review/ksr01-01.htm