Looking at 'Well-Being' in Terms d Lifestyle: Healthy or Trendy?

생활양식으로서의 웰빙(Well-Being): 이론과 적용의 뿌리 찾기

This paper is an attempt to discuss theoretical and empirical issues embedded in a rapidly dispersing well-being lifestyle in Korea. Increase of people's interests in health and well-being reflects the fact that Korea has been developed socially and economically to the level for common people to pursue the quality of life beyond survival or basic standards of life. The term, well-being life style, was first constructed and has been dispersed through mass media. Media contributes to popularize health issues and to deliver the importance of lifestyle for health promotion to the general public. Well-being lifestyle, initiated by media and joined with commercialism, however, reveal certain negative sides as well. Health or healthy lifestyle in Western societies has been rooted theoretically in the change of health paradigm and the political emphasis on the lifestyle for health promotion in policy implications. Well-being lifestyle in Korea, in lack of theoretical and institutional foundations, is being substantially formed into distorted consumerism. Based on the sociological theories of stratification, it might be necessary to discuss the well-being consumerism in respect of tension among people with different consuming power and the destruction of solid market principles. Considering well-being consumerism as a risk factor to societal well-being, it is also necessary to examine conflicting or misleading information about well-being and to explore the scientific knowledge and principles. All these discussions and examination need to be done with interdisciplinary efforts. Especially, tasks for developing application principles for everyday life are on hands of researchers in living sciences.