earticle

영어

Once we are born, we grow to maturity, and face death inevitable to anyone in the world. Even the highly developed medical technology cannot prevent unfortunate death, and even the universality of death cannot release the anxiety about it. When people get old, they become more interested in death as they come to experience deaths of their acquaintances. These interests made the modern people who seek wellbeing think about‘the quality of death’and made them be interested in the way to help face death comfortably while lessening the anxiety about it. Many scholars chose this education on death to release the anxiety about it, which is impossible to be experienced directly. This study is to look into the status of death preparing eduction in Korea for older adults. Especially, citing the resulting data of the cases in which the death preparing education was practiced in Seoul and Gyeonggi Province, it has contemplated about its necessity, suggesting the way to activate the education on death and the limit of the program on it in Korea, and tried to provide necessary data for concrete practice that helps to accept death with comfort and dignity. As we looked into the educational aspect, social aspect and social welfare aspect of the education on death, we recognized the necessity of personal and social efforts for maturity of death culture. Education on death must include the right understanding about ultimate purpose of life, meaning of death and fear of death, and it is also important to provide information on how to write one’s will, legal knowledge about inheritance, execution of funeral service, burial procedure of the corpse and setting the grave, etc. which are some realistic problems related to death. For the purpose of this education, systematic support is needed. Discussing how to face death can suggest the direction of life on how to live the time left to us. So, studying about death while composing a multi-disciplinary team in various fields such as philosophy, social studies, religious studies, medicine, nursing, social welfare studies must be progressed actively.

한국어

노년기에는 다른 생애주기보다 자신과 관계를 맺었던 지인들의 죽음을 경험하게 되면서 죽음에 대한 관심이 높아진다. 이러한 관심은 웰빙을 추구하는 현대인들에게‘죽음의 질(質)’대해 생각하게 하였고, 노년기의 죽음에 대한 불안감을 덜어주면서 다가오는 죽음에 대해 편안하게 대면 할 수 있도록 돕는 방법에 대해 관심을 갖게 하였다. 이런 시점에서 직접적인 경험이 불가능한 죽음의 불안감을 완화할 수 있는 방법으로 많은 학자들이 죽음준비교육을 선택하였고, 더욱이 기독교적 측면에서 영성적인 원조 차원에서 노년기에 접어든 사람들에 대한 긍정적인 죽음인식과 태도로써 죽음을 준비하도록 하는 등 교회의 사회사업적 측면에서의 기여도 중요할 것이다. 이에 본 연구는 우리나라 노인죽음준비교육 사례를 살펴봄으로써 죽음준비교육의 필요성을 제고하고 현재 죽음준비교육 프로그램의 주요특성과 한계점 등을 파악함으로써 향후 기독교적 측면에서의 죽음준비교육의 활성화 방안을 제시하였다.