• Korean Journal of Hospice Care
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• v.5 no.1
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• pp.42-49
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• 2005

To determine which are the culturally specific factors of Korean bereavement, this chapter focuses on the view of death and the traditional mourning process which reflect Korean values and norms. The formation of the Korean view and understanding of death has been strongly influenced by three of its major traditional religions: Shamanism, Buddhism, and Confucianism (Park:1994: Hao:1999) and Christianity more recently. Each religion has a different view of death and the appropriate expression of mourning. Korea accommodates funeral customs and rules strictly as a cultural system and has retained these traditions over a long period; hence, some of the traditional funeral rituals still remain in modern Korean life, although some of the rites have been simplified. We have looked at the various ways in which grief and mourning is displayed and shared in a collective manner over a long period of time. This fits in well within the other Eastern cultures that are collectively organized, and contrary to the Eurocentric models do not hastily seek to detach the living from the dead and recognize that grief is a long process, and different individuals may take different amounts of time to recover from the grief. The view of death and bereavement in Korea has sprung from the roots of three Korean religions, together with the recent addition of Christianity, although they mainly result from the three earlier religions. The beliefs of these religions are still closely linked together in the rituals of Korean bereavement on both conscious and unconscious levels. The influence of these religions is evident in practice through the bereaved family's mourning reactions, funeral rites and customs and its views about death. Korea used to have a period of mourning for three years, following traditional mourning rites; then the chief mourner and the bereaved families could return to their normal life. In spite of this long mourning process for the bereaved family, once the funeral ceremony is finished, people expect the bereaved family not to express their grief in public; even the bereaved family does not like to talk about death. The process for bereaved people is related to mourning processes in terms of detachment from the deceased in order to start a new life. Relatives and the community recommend the performance of the kut ceremony for relieving the grief of the bereaved. When one family member dies in an unlucky way, the bereaved family may have some fear or other psychological reactions of grief such as pain, depression, insomnia and nightmares, hallucinations or other physical reactions. Unlucky deaths give the bereaved a very painful time and these types of reactions are often more serious than reactions to natural death. But through the kut ceremony, the bereaved family can start to make a new relationship with the deceased. The taboo of this type of death and death generally remains a crucial aspect of the isolation that bereaved people might face and the collective nature of mourning(even where it is still present) is unable to address this aspect of the privatization of grief.

• Journal of Hospice and Palliative Care
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• v.16 no.2
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• pp.80-89
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• 2013

Purpose: We investigated how intensive care unit (ICU) nurses understand the meaning of death, death anxiety, death concern and respect for life. Methods: From November 2009 through February 2010, a survey was conducted on 230 nurses working at the ICU of 10 general hospitals located in Seoul and Gyeonggi province. Participants were asked to answer a questionnaire consisted of 67 questions under four categories of the meaning of death, death anxiety, death concern and respect for life. Results: Participants scored 4.27 points on their understanding of the meaning of death, 4.43 on death anxiety, 4.12 on death concern and 4.18 on respect for life. Participants' meaning of death was negatively correlated with death anxiety and death concern and positively with respect for life. Participants' positive meaning of death was negatively correlated with death anxiety and death concern and positively with respect for life. Participants' negative meaning of death was negatively correlated with death anxiety and death concern and positively with respect for life. Participants' death anxiety was positively correlated with death concern and negatively with respect for life. Participants' death concern was negatively correlated with respect for life. Conclusion: Compared with nurses who served at ICU for a long time, nurses with less ICU experience scored lower on the meaning of death and respect for life, while they presented high anxiety and concern about death. A training course may help nurses develop their view on the meaning of death, which in turn would enhance their performance in caring dying patients.

• Journal of Korean Philosophical Society
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• v.130
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• pp.161-186
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• 2014

Recently, the social concerns on well dying come to the fore as important discourse on dignity of human death, which detonation by the problem of euthanasia. Well dying means 'good death' the meaning of a word, and it means 'prepared death', 'decented death' 'beautiful death' by extention of sematic context like this as a general rule. In this paper the writter have considered that how the view of Buddhism's death contribute to the discourse on well dying, which regarding death as the starting point, death conquest as the finishing point of the theory. The Buddhism's discourse on the attitude interpretation conquest process of death contributed to formation of abundant discourse on well dying, especially the view of Buddhism is able to contribute to conquest of death anxiety and death education, that death conquest interpret to spiritual psychological phenomenon not physical physiological eternal life (or immortality) and conquer death through enlightenment on reality of things by spiritual psychological change.

• The Journal of Korean Academic Society of Nursing Education
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• v.9 no.2
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• pp.329-339
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• 2003

The purpose of this study is to consider of meaning in life based on Frankl's theory and to propose of hospice nursing according to conceptual framework of meaning in life. The conceptual framework of meaning in life is composed of 4 phases. According to the first phase, acceptance & awareness of self and life, hospice nurse should helps dying patient to accept limitedness of human existence and death. and according to the second phase, actualization of creative value, hospice nurse can helps dying patient to discover meaning in life through doing a deed for last time before his death. According to the third phase, actualization of experiential value, hospice nurse can helps them to discovery of meaning by experiencing of love through meetings with other people, nature, and god. According to the forth phase, actualization of attitudinal value, hospice nurse can helps them to discovery of meaning by realizing meaning in suffering and death through exercising of the inner freedom to choose bravery and acceptance in the face of death and misfortune. As mentioned above, the Frankl's theory accords with the core of hospice nursing that helps people to accomplish human essence in suffering and death. therefore we accepted Frankl's point of view, asserted that one of the most important roles of a hospice nurse as a supporter and sustainer for dying patients is to help patients to find meaning in life even in the course of death. To achieve the goal, hospice nurses should try to have a firm faith through philosophical introspection about life, death, human existence and meaning in life what the most important goal of life is to discover meaning in life and human have the duty and responsibility of recognizing and pursuing meaning up to the last moment of life.

• The Journal of the Convergence on Culture Technology
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• v.3 no.4
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• pp.27-33
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• 2017

Epicurus and Lucretius expressed that death is neither evil to the living nor the dead. On the contrary, our everyday perception of death is that death is evil. Such everyday perception might seem in lack of introspection and blind but our living environment and form of life are strongly supporting this perception. This paper argues that there is reasonable cause for believing death is evil. In order to justify this argue, this paper critically supports Thomas Nagel's 'Deprivation Theory', which identifies the cause of death being in evil in the deprivation of life. This paper investigates the main substances of 'Deprivation Theory, suggests the related problems and therefore reconstitutes the main arguments of 'Deprivation Theory, resulting in the investigation of the following facts; that we cannot avoid the fate of death, but that our existence is headed towards the future, and that as independent individuals we have infinite possibilities of life. Death is natural to humanity as species, but as independent individuals death deprives us from possible life and future. Therefore, death we encounter in our living environment and form of life is evil. As species, we can agree with Epicurus and Lecretius' view, but as independent individuals we cannot share them.

• Journal of muscle and joint health
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• v.27 no.3
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• pp.229-237
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• 2020

Purpose: This paper aims to clarify the concept of well-dying in the sociocultural context of Korea. Methods: Walker and Avant's method was chosen for the concept analysis. Through a literature review of 36 papers, the attributes and definition of well-dying were derived. Results: The literature revealed that in Korean society, well-dying is defined as the process of actively preparing for death throughout life. The attributes of the concept are a reflection on death, death acceptance, searching for meaning, transcendence, advance decision-making, and sharing values with family. The motivation for thinking about death, the hope of dying with dignity, and the Korean cultural view of death precede the concept, followed by dying with dignity, personal and family happiness, and improved quality of life and death. Conclusion: This study may lead to the unification of concept use based on mutual understanding, thus enabling effective communication in research, education, and clinical settings. This can be the rationale for the development of tools and educational programs as well as establishing policies related to well-dying in Korea.

• Cross-Cultural Studies
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• v.22
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• pp.151-175
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• 2011

In this article, I have analyzed the signification of the death of Don Quijote from the oriental religious and philosophical point of view, comparing with the novels of Kim, DongRi. We are able to read Cervantes' hope for his absolute ideal to be lasting forever via the death of Don Quijote, in the base of a strong will named of Gukyeong's life. In the same time, we can also discovery death as lasting of life in the basis of buddhist idea and death as the unification with nature via the meeting between the living and the dead in the Montesinos Cave. Montesinos Cave symbolizes a unclassified and chaotic space, which the Shamanist can meet the dead with a extatic ceremony and both supernatural life and daily life coexist. Therefore, the symbolic death of Don Quijote in Montesinos Cave is abe to be explained by approaching to absolute freedom named of Hatal, in other words, voluntary and conscious death to escape from the yugo of being. Considering the fact that Kim, Dongri emphasized on the unification of sky, earth and human being, keeping a racial identification in the face of the stream of occidental materialism in the time of Japanese conquest, we can look for the similarity with Cervantes' ideal. Contrary to the religious dogmatic ideal, Cervantes treated to recover the human nature and vitality, transcending the occidental rationalism and religious ideology in the time of Counter-reformation.

• Korean Journal of Health Education and Promotion
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• v.24 no.1
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• pp.109-125
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• 2007

How an elderly people meets death is the matter of how he has lived his life. It is very important for an elderly people at the last step of his life to re-light up life and to meet death with dignity. The purpose of this study is to investigate where fear or anxiety of death come from among the four dimensins of death anxiety and to compare the differenced between the elderly group and non-elderly group, For this research, the 473 of the subjects from 20 to 80 years old attending social welfare center and community areas in Seoul have been questionned. The summary for the study mentioned the following: First, the overall scores of death anxiety, in the non-aged group, gender and religiosity are important factors affecting the decrease of death anxiety, On the other hand, in the aged group, self-respect, death readiness and number of friends are significant factors. Secondly, for death anxiety of self, age and spouse are significant relationships among non-aged group and gender, death readiness and number of friends for aged-group. In the dying of self, the following each three significant variables: gender, self-respect and spouse among non-aged group and gender, self-respect and number of friends among aged group. In death anxiety of others, age, view on next world and spouse are best predictor for non-aged group. Finally, family-relationship, self-respect and spouse are significant factors for aged group. In dying of others, only one factors are influenced for non-aged group, on the other hand, gender, self-respect and death readiness are important factors for aged group. There remains the need for more detailed examination into the nature of this relationship and the extent to which core components strongly affecting the above subscales.

• Journal of the Daesoon Academy of Sciences
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• v.16
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• pp.69-85
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• 2003

Death has been one of the basic objects in philosophy and religion. Why do people feel afraid about death? Maybe it is because they don't know the situation after death or because they have a wrong idea about it. Someone may think that he/she doesn't care the situation. But this attitude is wrong. We must understand that our attitude about life is shaped by our knowledge of the situation after death. A recurrent theme about death in popular thought is the idea that death is mysterious. As we have seen, it is difficult to formulate a satisfactory philosophical analysis of the concept of death. If it is impossible to analyse the concept of death, then it is impossible to explain precisely what we mean when we say that something dies. It might be said therefore that, in virtue of this fact, death is mysterious. Of course, death is not distinctively mysterious - all other unanalysable concepts are equally mysterious in this way. Reflection on death gives rise to a variety of philosophical questions. One of the deepest of these is a question about the nature of death. Typically, philosophers interpret this question as a call for an analysis or definition of the concept of death. Plato, for example, proposed to define death as the separation of soul from body. However, this definition is not acceptable to those who think that there are no souls. It is also unacceptable to anyone who thinks that plants and lower animals have no souls, but can nonetheless die. Others have defined death simply as the cessation of life. This too is problematic, since an organism that goes into suspended animation ceases to live, but may not actually die. The eastern philosophers proposed to define death as the nonduality of life and death. Taoists, for example, do not believe in the Wheel of Life of the Buddhists nor in the Heaven or Hell of Christianity. Taoists view existence as glorious. The whole Universe, they teach, is a marvelous, vibrant Unity wherein everything, visible and invisible, pulses with energy and changes. As being develops through the experience of existence, its vessels are swept onwards by the mighty stream of the eternal TAO to other forms of expression and activity. Man does not die; he merely extends into new fields. Taoists teach that the end of a person is the return to the Ultimate Reality. "Life is uncertain - Death is certain": This is a well known saying in Buddhism. Knowing very well that death is certain and it is a natural phenomenon that everyone has to face, we should not be afraid of death. Yet, instinctively, all of us fear death because we do not know how to think of its inevitability. We like to cling to our life and body and so develop too much craving and attachment.

• The Journal of Korean Academic Society of Nursing Education
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• v.26 no.4
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• pp.383-392
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• 2020

Purpose: This study was a descriptive study to identify factors affecting the attitude toward life-sustaining treatment of nurses working at long-term care hospitals. Methods: Data were collected through structured questionnaires from August 2nd to 27th, 2019. Study participants consisted of 163 nurses who were working for at least 6 months from 7 long-term care hospitals in B and K city. Data were analyzed using t-test, ANOVA, Scheffe' test, Pearson's correlation coefficients, and hierarchical regression with SPSS WIN v 21.0. Results: There were significantly positive correlations between awareness of good death (r=.46, p<.001) and perception of patients' rights (r=.32, p<.001). The factors affecting participants' attitude toward life-sustaining treatment were awareness of good death (β=.35, p<.001) and their own view of death (β=.24, p=.001), which explained about 27.0% of the attitude toward life-sustaining treatment. Conclusion: Based on these results, it is necessary to develop nursing educational materials that can establish values for deaths, and cultivate legal and ethical knowledge related to attitude toward life-sustaining treatment. In addition, since the severity of a patient's condition varies and the characteristics of the institution vary depending on the type of hospital, a study is needed on the relevance of variables considering the hospital environment.