Disaster Healing Community Based on Spirituality in a Cross-Border/Hyper-Connected Era - Focusing on the Treatment Project for Leprosy Patients in Gangwon Province Since the 1960s -

In the Cross-Border/Hyper-Connected era, infectious disease disasters present significant issues in reviewing the humanities research methodology of disasters and healing. Research on infectious diseases requires medical, historical, and cultural approaches to their causes, pathways of transmission, prevention and treatment, and therapeutic drugs. Hansen’s disease (Leprosy), which will be covered in this article, is one of the chronic infectious diseases that has been spread worldwide. It is a major research subject that can examine the culture of disaster and relief, care, and healing.
First, let us hear the voice requesting the establishment of settlements and hospitals between early modern times and the 1950s in the Kangwon province. Through our work, we will meet traces of Florence Murray (Severance Hospital, medical missionary). Next, this article scrutinizes the formation and establishment process of cured patient settlements, as well as treatment projects for leprosy patients in the Kangwon area. This article will conclude by examining the care and relief activities of home-based patients developed in cooperation with the Kangwon branch of the Korean Leprosy Association, The Christian World Vision, and the Korean Christian Leprosy Relief Association since the 1960s and 1970s.