The Country of the Month for October was South Korea. The main idea of the article was to praise the accomplishments done by music therapists in a country that has had a slower start in the field of music therapy.
Countries like South Korea that are a bit behind the larger countries like the United States in the area of music therapy, as of the last 1990s only ten music therapists were employed in South Korea, are often times over-looked. However, the accomplishments made by music therapists in South Korea are very astounding. Even though South Korea still does not have the same number of job opportunities, and even fewer full-time jobs are available to music therapists, the music therapists are very involved with events such as the celebrating of the 10th anniversary of the Korean Music Therapy Association.
I was first drawn to the article simply because the main subject was South Korea, but as I read the article my interests was piqued with one particular method of combining music and medicine. In South Korea, music therapy has been teamed with Eastern tradition medicine and oriental philosophy. I was very intrigued by this combination because music therapists are using both Korean and western music. I thought it was very impressive that the music therapists in South Korea thought to incorporate two completely different types of music. I then began to wonder why it is I was so impressed by the collaboration. I assume that such a team effort would not be seen as so significant to music therapists in South Korea. But still, I was very impressed by this, what I thought was, a unique partnership.
In American culture, people find it hard to put"classical" music with anything other than other things that are viewed to be"classical," especially anything from the far East. I do not know if"western music" meant music such as Haydn, Beethoven, or Mozart though. Yet the very idea of trying to combine some kind of eastern medicine like acupuncture and listening to symphony by Mozart is very foreign to me. The habit of Americans, I think, is that we associate certain things with a type of culture. So to pair up ancient oriental medicine and philosophy with western music in addition to Korean music is very impressive.