These days, healing is the key word looming up in front of us as health concerns are rising in our society. Although healing and curing are similar in meaning, there is a fundamental distinction between them. Linguistically, curing is to treat or remedy illnesses and injuries with medicine and medical practices. But healing is naturally conquering or getting better from any kind of disease and dysfunction. Curing is a kind of medical practice to get rid of illness, while healing means solving essentially the trouble or eliminating its source through analyzing and understanding its cause. 
    If we have any disease and get sick, we usually go to the hospital to check and treat our bodies. That is just a kind of curing activity by medicine and medical doctors. Even though our bodies can be cured by such medical practices, but they cannot be perfectly recovered from any disease by just curing. Healing is necessary for us to return to the original healthy condition that we lost.
    In general, curing means an external medical process, while healing does an internal one that is invisible to our eyes but can be felt in the heart. Healing is mainly used in a psychological treatment, and it can take place at a mental level. Healing can work at a spiritual level during the process of recovering from various terrible mind traumas such as violence, wars, deaths, stresses, disorders, divorces, and acute psychological shocks in the past. Because modern people are suffering from innumerable trauma, we need desperately healing of our spirits.
    We are forced to live among all kinds of stresses which are generated from highly competitive living conditions in society. So we can experience mental problems such as depression, frustration, and hysteria from a gradually deteriorating environment in many ways. What's worse is that the environment shows no sign of improvement. Therefore, we have no other alternative but to live with the potential danger being always exposed to emotional trauma. So, we must strengthen our healing power to overcome these situations.
    Individuals can have terrible childhood trauma from various reasons, which are never forgotten and remain active in their minds. The psychological shocks that enter the subconscious form indelible images often resurge and harass people. Because the power of traumas can change our bodies, manners, minds, and personalities, we have to try and remove the influence of trauma. Recently, the SBS entertainment talk show "Healing Camp" is receiving much attention as a popular program in which many famous people such as actors, singers, and sport stars participate to open their hearts and to heal their traumas. Watching it, many viewers may have sympathy for the participants comparing the experiences of the TV personalities to their own. In literature, healing is frequently used as a theme to express the protagonist's trauma and the process of its treatment in many methods.
    We always are obliged to experience lots of traumas in the society where terrible traumatic life events happen every day. So we need healing abilities to recover our wounded souls as well as our broken bodies. We must learn to reform or reframe negative thoughts about ourselves and the society that we carried in the past. And we must also learn how to keep our bodies and souls from all kinds of bad disease and trauma. As we need curing to remedy disordered bodies, so we need healing to recover our weary souls. We must be careful not to hurt anybody's feelings with disagreeable sayings and doings. Let's keep in mind that we live together as a member of the same society. Therefore, we have a common responsibility on each other's trauma, and we have to make every effort to overcome them with a sense of community.

By Prof. Min Kyung-taek
Dept. of English Language and Literature