• Survey Research
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• v.12 no.3
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• pp.95-121
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• 2011

The purpose of this study is to measure Koreans' views on the life and death and to illuminate the structural relationship between their subscales. The subscales are composed of afterlife views, death anxiety, death concern, will of suicide inhibition. Data drawn from Korean General Social Survey(KGSS) collected in 2009 were analyzed. The findings show that favorable attitude towards afterlife has positive relationship with favorable attitude towards returning to this life. The favorable attitude towards returning to the present life has positive relationship with death anxiety while it has negative relationship with will of suicide inhibition. The favorable attitude towards afterlife has positive relationship with death concern and will of suicide inhibition. Social support and happiness have negative impact on death concern while they are positively associated with will of suicide inhibition. These findings indicate that all subscales of views on life and death are significantly related to themselves and are also correlated with socio-demographic factors, which means that we have to comprehensively look inside the views on the life and death in order to understand the increasing suicide among Koreans. Further studies need approaching Koreans' views on the life and death by using more validated tools to capture their holistics picture.

• Korean Journal of Culture and Social Issue
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• v.10 no.1
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• pp.31-82
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• 2004

The purpose of this study was development of a synthetic scale to measure young adults' views of life and death. Participants were 610 university students. The authors developed a View of Life and Death Scale including several subscales of afterlife views(belief in afterlife and retribution, belief in souls' effects and transmigration), meanings of death(liberation, nature, integration, collapse, impact, futility), death anxiety, death concern(death acceptance, death awareness) and life respect will(suicide inhibition, abortion inhibition, organ donation intention). The present study contributed to enhance our understanding of view of life and death in young adulthood. This study, therefore, could work as a stepping stone to investigate the structural relationship among elements included in views of life and death in young adulthood and to explore the consequences and determinants of personal view of life and death.

• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
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• v.20 no.11
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• pp.501-510
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• 2020

The aim of this study was to examine the characteristics of views of life and death and spiritual wellbeing of medical and non-medical university students and to compare their correlation. To this end, 95 medical students from H University and 103 non-medical students from A University were sampled for this research. The research results are as follows: For both medical and non-medical university students, negative meaning of death was found to be most high among sub-factors of views of life and death. Medical and non-medical university students differed in death anxiety and life respect will as medical students showed lower death anxiety and higher life respect will than non-medical students. As a result of analyzing the correlation between view of life and death and the sub-factors of spiritual wellbeing, religious wellbeing showed negative correlation with meaning of death, and both existential and religious wellbeing showed positive correlation with life respect will in medical university students. The results of this study are expected to be helpful in constructing differentiated contents in biomedical ethics education for medical university students who will be exposed to medical deaths.

• Korean Journal of Health Education and Promotion
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• v.28 no.2
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• pp.109-123
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• 2011

Objectives: The purpose of the present study was to explore the relationships between views on suicide, death, and life and lifetime suicidal attempts in the Korean context. Methods: Multiple logistic regression model was tested using data from Korean General Social Survey of 2009. We utilized the nationally representative survey data obtained via multistage stratified area probability sampling design from 1,599 respondents aged ${\geq}18$ years. Results: The proportion of lifetime suicidal attempts was 12.1% of entire sample in Korea. Some components of views on suicide and death influenced significantly on lifetime suicidal attempts after adjusting for demographic and health-related factors. The positive view on suicide(OR=0.76, 95% CI: 0.62-0.94), the naturalistic view on afterlife(OR=0.37, 95% CI: 0.67-0.99) and death concern(OR=0.67, 95% CI: 0.55-0.83) were risk factors of lifetime suicidal attempts. In contrast, the social responsibility view on suicide(OR=1.17, 95% CI: 1.00-1.37) and the transcendental view on afterlife(OR=1.25, 95% CI: 1.02-1.54) lowered the risk. Conclusions: Practical implications of the findings were discussed exploring policy evidences to screen high risk groups out and to reframe educational programs for suicide prevention. Strategic health messages need to be developed and transmitted for prevention of suicide.

• Korean Journal of Child Studies
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• v.30 no.4
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• pp.241-256
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• 2009

This survey of children's perceptions and experiences of death was conducted with 118 6th-grade elementary school children in Seoul. Data consisted of responses to questionnaires in three categories : (1) perceptions of death, (2) views of afterlife, and (3) death-related experiences (life, education, and media). Results showed that children had negative emotions (61.8%) such as fear and anxiety about death. Children's attitudes about suicide were sympathetic (34.5%) as well as critical (53.7%). There was no relation between religion and view of afterlife. Finally, children experienced death more through mass media (TV, internet, etc.) than through life experience or death education. This study suggests the necessity for death education and warns of negative effects of media and games.

• Journal of English Language & Literature
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• v.58 no.4
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• pp.611-632
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• 2012

Beckett's life-long struggling with death may be illuminated in terms of the Western tradition of thanatology as well as Philippe Ariès's anthropological classification of death. Among the Western tradition, Beckett's oeuvre incarnates memento mori, timor mori, nihilism, theatrum mundi, life as afterlife, and the transsubstantiation of the self. Among the five views of death Ariès suggests, Beckett appears to foreground the death of the self and the invisible dirty death. In a world devoid of transcendental Signified, Beckett's resident is "a poor player/That struts and frets his hour upon the stage." Our contemporary vision of death is dominated by the dirty death and timor mori resurrected from the cultural icon of danse macabre in the late Mediaeval age as vividly dramatized in W;t by Margaret Edson. Beckett stands in no man's land: Lucky complains of divine aphathia as well as scopes at the possibility of God's existence like Hamm. Beckett's way of getting out of the dilemma is laughing a mirthless and dianoetic laugher. To bourgeois class who shudder at the sight of Grim Death after forgettable years of indulgence and addiction to capitalist consumption, Beckett seems to preach, your life is a death-in-life, you are not born yet until you are baptized with existential awakening as Gregor Samsa in Kafka's Verwandlung, or Tolstoy in Confession.

• Journal of the Daesoon Academy of Sciences
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• v.19
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• pp.213-250
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• 2005

Until 1970's, mankind have not had definite perspectives on what life after the death was like, which is one of the most important problems for them. Their concepts of the 'life and death problem' has been distorted by the dogmas of the established religions such as Buddhism or Christianity on heaven and hell. But the mankind came to have wholly different views on the life after death thanks to the studies by Raymond Moody Jr. or Elizabeth Quebler-Ross in the mid-1970's. This is the studies on the so-called 'near-death experience(NDE)' which made humankind be able to have scientific approach to the life after death for the first time in their history. What attracts our attention at this point is, however, that the arguements of the NDErs on humman destiny accurately coincide with those of the established religions. In the NDE, most of the experiencers have an encounter with the personal being, symbolized by the Light, through whom they learnt that the devotion(or love) to the neighborhood and the gain of the wisdom are the sole meaning of life. With this result, we can recognize why essential virtues maintained by the established religions until now such as ultimate compassion, unconditional love, forgiveness, or insightful learning are so significant, and that our studies of the NDE are very important in this respect.

• Journal of Digital Convergence
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• v.17 no.11
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• pp.427-434
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• 2019

The purpose of this study is to investigate the factors influencing the willingness of nursing college students to have respect for life and to use them as basic principle to help develop an effective bioethics education program for nursing students. A descriptive study was used with 442 nursing students. Data were collected with a structured questionnaire and analyzed using descriptive analysis, t-test, ANOVA, Pearson correlation coefficients, and Multiple regression. The result showed that factors affecting respect for life and will were meanings of death, death anxiety, death concern and these three variables explained about 43.6% of respect for life and will. It is necessary for nursing students to understand the meaning of death and to reduce death anxiety by improving understanding of meanings of death. It also suggests the need to develop an educational program that can improve the respect for life and will by establishing their own views on death and improving the involvement of death in nursing a dying patient and family.

• Journal of Hospice and Palliative Care
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• v.16 no.3
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• pp.155-165
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• 2013

Koreans' traditional view on death has been much influenced by Confucianism, Taoism, Buddhism, and shamanism since ancient times. Confucianism emphasizes the importance of the real life in this world and highly praises doing good deeds for the family and the community. It also praises people who are enlightened by education and self-discipline. Confucian scholars admit that death cannot be understood by rational thinking although it is unavoidable as a cosmic order. Taoism sees life as the same entity as death; Both are two different aspects of the same cosmos or the wholeness. However, the disciples of Taoism became much interested in a long life and well being that may be achieved by harmonizing with the cosmic order. Buddhism thinks that death and life are an "illusion". It says that people can be enlightened by recognizing the fact that "Nothing is born and nothing is dying in this world. Everything is the product of your mind occupied with false belief." However, secular Buddhists believe in the afterlife and metempsychosis of the soul. This belief is sometimes connected with the view of the traditional shamanism. Shamanism dichotomizes the world between "this world" and "that world". After death, the person's soul travels to "that world", where it may influence life of people who reside in "this world". And shamans who are spiritual beings living in "this world" mediate souls and living people. In conclusion, there are various views and beliefs regarding death, which are influenced by a number of religions and philosophies. They should be seriously considered when making a medical decision regarding the end of patients' life.

• English Language & Literature Teaching
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• no.6
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• pp.25-34
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• 2000

This paper will examine the way Philip Larkin as a modern poet views unfavorable but inescapable past experiences with ambivalent attitudes. Larkin has written poems which concern the matters of time, aging, and death. Out of these related themes, the past has offered one major subject for Larkin's poems. Those poems on his personal experiences, coming out of his deep interest in the past and in the relationship the past has with his present and future life, reveal much of the poet's personality. Because of Larkin's conflicting attitudes towards past life, however, the poems about his past create both ambivalence and attraction in the readers' minds. The unusual restraint of emotion and conflict revealed in the poems about past life render rare modern lyrics that are unlike exuberant romantic poems.