Korean Job Discussion Forums

[thorin]

Is it the short-handled brooms? Lack of calcium in the tradional Korean diet? My grandmother is 97 and has better posture than I do. So what's up with all these horizontal-backed old women?

[Koreabound2004]

I bet is has to do with both things that you mention....also it is pretty common in my farm town, lots of 90 degree angle women, as I call them...and I attribute it a lot to the way the sit, squat, and farm. I see old women hunched over in rows of onions and various other crops, or squatting in the ground selling things in plastic tubs all day. Also, sitting cross legged on the floor kills my back...wonder if that affects them this way after so many years. Using squat toilets, sleeping on floors....who knows? I think it is a combo of all of these factors possibly.

[hellofaniceguy]

Formative years lifestyle. You spend years hunched over slaving away in the fields...you'd be bent too!

[canadian_in_korea]

I asked my husband about the old ladies I see all hunched over.....he says that it is exactly what everyone here is saying....years of beeing bent over cooking, farming, carrying children on their backs, etc....I asked why his mom and nanny are okay...and he said they left the country before their backs were bad.

[schwa]

My old ma standing is almost equally hunched, she's of British & Canadian stock, & as far as I know she never spent a day working any fields. She's not unique among the other oldsters in her retirement home in Canada either.

Other geriatric factors must play into this condition sometimes too.

[tomato]

Read The Ugly American.
It tells an allegedly true story about a Southeast Asain village where the old people are hunched over, whereas the old people in a nearby village were not.
A foreigner noticed that the brooms were made from canes, and that the canes grew longer in the nearby village. So he put two and two together and propagated the variety which grew in the nearby village. That eventually corrected the problem.

What Korea needs is another ugly American.

[mindmetoo]

I would think it's due to a lack of calcium. The problem must be made worse in Korea and their general avoidance of dairy products.

[peppermint]

I'm sure osteoporosis is part of it, and I wonder if it isn't at least a little genetic. Koreans seem to have broken bones a lot more often than I remember from home, even now.

[tomato]

I'm not saying that lack of calcium is not a factor, but the difference between women's work and men's work must also be a factor.

Why do we see so many hunched �ҸӴ�'s but so few hunched �Ҿƹ���'s?

[peppermint]

Osteoporosis affects women much more than men as a general rule- It's related to the changes in a womans body during menopause

[tomato]

Sorry, Peppermint, I didn't know that.
Anyway, I appreciate your correcting my mistake without saying, "Hey, you �ٺ�, you don't know what you're talking about!"
That's what many participants on this board would have done.

[Ilsanman]

Most of my friends don't drink a lot of milk here. I agree. It sucks. I like true skim milk. Even the low fat stuff here is thick for me. Tastes terrible, too.

[andrew]

.....