Comments on: I happened to like mugwort

By: Ledtim

Ledtim — Mon, 09 Apr 2007 16:05:27 +0000

This article doesn’t mention it, but another article I looked up because Sonagi brought up cancer said one of the girls had lumps on her neck which turned out to be cancer. The nuns tried moxibustion on the girl’s neck instead of taking her to a doctor. That’s just stupid of the nuns. I hope nobody even tries to explain that piece of unadulterated stupidity with Korean superstitiousness or cultural differences, because any Korean I know with half a brain would tell a girl with lumps on her neck to see a doctor, not burn mugworts on their skin by *themselves*.

By: Sonagi

Sonagi — Mon, 09 Apr 2007 15:10:15 +0000

Oh, so schools can do whatever they like with poor kids as long as they don’t charge tuition. To wit, Railway: how would you react if a school burned powder on your kid’s skin without consulting you first? How would you react if a Korean doctor burned mugwort on YOUR skin without consulting you first?

By: railwaycharm

railwaycharm — Mon, 09 Apr 2007 14:19:49 +0000

The school offers free education to poor children

Sonagi, I would say the kids and their parents got their monies worth. They are not in America, so why would you benchmark the States? Parents complaining about a free lunch, give me a break! I can see you took the bait!

By: peninsular aborigine

peninsular aborigine — Mon, 09 Apr 2007 08:37:46 +0000

Mugwort I believe is also Hamlet’s “wormwood,” which was applied to a woman’s dugs in order to wean her baby with its inherent bitterness.

By: Sonagi

Sonagi — Sun, 08 Apr 2007 21:26:16 +0000

@railwaycharm:

The school offers free education to poor children. Those families probably live in shacks without running water or electricity and were glad to send their precious daughters to a school that probably has better facilities than the hometown cement block with bare wooden benches and a scratched up chalkboard.

Best intentions are not enough. US schools would get sued for something like this.

By: SomeguyinKorea

SomeguyinKorea — Sun, 08 Apr 2007 07:20:03 +0000

Obviously. We’ve got foreigners administering herbal medicine to superstitious young girls from rural areas in Mexico. To top it all off, the girls don’t see their parents regularly. Obviously, a recipe for mass hysteria.

By: railwaycharm

railwaycharm — Sun, 08 Apr 2007 02:38:03 +0000

Certainly the good sisters had the young girl’s best intentions in mind. If the parents were doing their job in the first-place, their girls would be home with them. Spare me. This is cheap journalism that mentally lazy Americans eat up.

By: SomeguyinKorea

SomeguyinKorea — Sun, 08 Apr 2007 00:57:29 +0000

Notice how the reporter chose to use the romanized ‘Suk’ instead of the proper English word, ‘mugwort’. Regardless of his or her intentions, it gives the impression that the nuns were potentially harming the girls with their exotic plants and ‘Asian’ practices (ironically, mugwort was ward off evil spirits in Europe during the middle ages). In reality, the nuns were using a common plant, one that is found on 4 continents, as a very mild herbal remedy.

By: Sonagi

Sonagi — Sat, 07 Apr 2007 19:47:15 +0000

Correction: they were allowed to see their families three times a year.

By: Sonagi

Sonagi — Sat, 07 Apr 2007 19:40:09 +0000

Moxibustion ranks right up there with blood-letting. The opening scene of the Korean movie The Surrogate Womb (Ssibadi) shows the yangbang wife gritting her teeth while the mother-in-law burns mugwort on her abdomen. Forty percent of infertility cases are owing to the man, but I’m sure no man in Chosun Korea got his balls moxibusted.

What’s especially troubling is that the girls were allowed to see their families only once a year. The parents were probably asked to sign medical release forms and thus the family of the girl with cancer probably had no idea she was seriously ill until it was too late.