Many Koreans are willing to believe that underground water does harbor radiation that can seep to the surface to harm them. This belief is easily confirmed by media advertisements for beds that promise to prevent the radiation from reaching them during their sleeping hours. Many ill persons whose illnesses have not been helped by medicines will change the location of their beds to avoid what they believe are the harmful radiation. Since dowsing is so widely accepted in Korea, there is a general acceptance that this unorthodox approach to curing some medical conditions may be valid.
When the French foreign missioners came to Korea back in the 19th century, they introduced dowsing to find underground water for wells. This practice was continued as a result of some well-known priests who wrote on the subject. However, the subject is still surrounded with skepticism, and the scientific community has little sympathy for it.
Water diviners will often determine before building a house where the water veins are located in order to avoid them. This way of thinking is a throw-back to the days of the geomancers. During the interview the research head said he began his study of water radiation after his wife became sick. He spent most of his money for treatment, and she was close to death. After her recovery he decided to devote himself to the study to help others with his research center.
Today, he is a firm believer and promoter of dowsing for water, and what the practice can do to help alleviate medical problems.
He has traveled to different parts of the country to discover water veins and to neutralize their effects. His research center will train dowsers, he said, with the knowledge necessary to discover and prevent the effects of the radiation. He has given lectures at the Catholic University of Pusan in the life-time study program. He intends to prepare lectures on water radiation, its history and why it's harmful to health.
The center head admits that many who come to him have all kinds of doubts but are looking for the last piece of straw to grasp, after they tried everything else. He wants to be a missioner for this message.
Many ideas concerning health, long popular in the East, have been accepted in the West; acupuncture, for example, is no longer dismissed, but largely accepted as a valid medical remedy. Whether dowsing to discover underground veins of water seeping radiation up to the surface will eventually become as popular, we will have to wait for the future to tell us.
