[Opinion] Hug Therapy Reaches Korea

Everybody makes a new year’s resolution at the end of a year. Whatever the result, to quit drinking or smoking should the most easily chosen resolution. In my case the most favored menu was to give my children one hug a day. I believe that hugging is essential for strengthening bonds and affections. Recently it deteriorated from once a day to more than once a “week.” The excuse is that I don`t get to see my two sons as frequently as before since they became junior school students.

During the World War II, new borns at a nursery house in Germany died one by one from collective malnutrition. Some of them even refused feeding. But there was one baby who was healthy. An investigation found out that forty babies were taken care of by one nurse who inserted the milk bottles in the milk supply gadgets, but the last baby was hugged by the nurse sitting on a chair for a rest. It was revealed that other babies died not of malnutrition but of lack of skin contacts.

Another famous example is the experiment carried out in the 1950s by a professor at University of Wisconsin, Harry Harlow, who gave the rhesus monkeys two "fake mothers”. When he placed one mother who had a milk bottle but was made of steel frames and another mother who did not have a milk bottle but was made of fluffy cloth, the baby monkeys only sucked the milk when they were hungry and spent the rest of the time hanging on the “cloth mother.” With this experiment the belief that children should be raised with principle declined and the child nurturing theory that affection and skin contacts are important became influential.

The Free Hugs Campaign, which was started in Australia, has reached Korea. One video prevailing on the Internet shows a scene where a policeman who was dissuading hugging in a public place, after hearing the intentions, gets hugged himself. Kathleen Keating writes humorously in her book “The Hug Therapy Book” that hugging is relaxing, helps get rid of insomnia and develop the shoulder and arm muscles, helps you become environment-friendly, has excellent heat protection effect, and does not require special tools to carry around since it is portable. What do you think? Would you not give the person you love or want to encourage a hug? Do it, whispering words like “I love you” or “Cheer up, everything will be OK.”

Heo Seung-ho, Editorial Writer, tigera@donga.com