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Students’ Names
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* Our group’s final project topic is “Free-Hug &
letting Korean people know actual meaning of
Free-hug ”
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* A social movement involving individuals who
offer hugs to strangers in public places
* It means ‘random acts of kindness’
* Selfless acts
* To make others feel better
* International Free-hug day is first Saturday of
July
* Free-hug was started in 2004 by an Australian
man, ‘Juan Mann’
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* Free-hug became
famous internationally
in 2006, because of the
Youtube Video
* http://www.youtube.c
om/watch?v=vr3x_RRJ
dd4
* Since we are all Koreans, we decided to address a
topic that all of us were curious about.
* Currently, the citizens of South Korea do not
understand why people “free-hug”.
* When I went back to Korea last summer and saw
these signs & saw how people reacted to these signs
negatively and even the people who were holding
up these signs seemed embarrassed in contrast to
people in America who promote “free hugs” with
such passion.
* We picked “free-hugs” as a topic to teach Koreans
the actual forgotten meaning of “free hugs”.
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* We went to a Korean Student Union event, and a
Korean church to offer free hugs to people.
* While offering free hugs, we also questioned people
whom were free-hugged that if they are aware of
actual meaning and purpose of free-hugs. Also let
them know what we wanted them to know (actual
meaning & purpose of free-hug).
* Student Name was holding up the sign, Student
Name was taking pictures, and I, Student Name ,
free-hugged.
* This project took about 2 days, performing at
different locations for each day, and took about 2
hours per day.
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* Picture of students doi
ng their free hugs
project
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* While trying to give free-hug on the street,
most people that wanted to be free-hugged
were people that are not Asian. There was no
Asian person who voluntarily came to us to be
free-hugged, so we had to ask some random
Asian people to be free-hugged. 43 Asians
refused and walked away when we asked, and
28 decided to be free-hugged and participate
our survey questions.
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* When we asked people whom we were giving
free-hugs to that if they know what actual
meaning and purpose of free-hug is, 19 out of
28 had no idea, 7 barely had some idea about
purpose of giving free-hugs, and 2 people knew
more than the rest, but still was not that clear.
As result shows, only two people had some kind
of idea of what for and why people free-hug,
which also means that none of the people
whom we free-hugged had clear idea of actual
meaning and purpose of free-hug.
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* Some people that we free-hugged and
participated our survey questions, had wrong
and negative point of view about free-hug on
the street, such as..
- People free-hug so guys can hug girls and girls
can hug guys
- Why would I hug or be hugged by people I don’t
even know? That’s kind of awkward.
- When girls are holding up the “free-hug” sign,
that look inappropriate.
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* As we thought and expected so, we ended up
with the result of that none of the people we
free-hugged was aware of the actual meaning
and purpose of free-hug, and some people
even had wrong and negative thoughts about
the free-hug. After finishing up our project, we
felt both miserable and satisfied from the
result we got. (continued on next page..)
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* When result came out as we expected, or even
worse than we expected, we felt so miserable and
ashamed about how Free-hug is not being accepted
or being accepted negatively by people from Asia.
However, we were still satisfied with our project
itself, because if the result did not came out as we
expected and all Asian people knew why actually
people free, our project would have been
meaningless and pointless. We were happy about
our choice of the project and glad that we at least
could let 28 Asians know the actual meaning and
purpose of the Free-Hug.
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