This study focused on the socialist camp's North Korean medical support and its effects on North Korean medical field from liberation to 1958. Except for the Soviet assistance from liberation to the Korean War, existing studies mainly have paid attention to the ‘autonomous’ growth of the North Korean medical field. The studies on the medical support of the Eastern European countries during the Korean War have only focused on one-sided support and neglected the interactions with the North Korean medical field. Failing in utilizing the materials produced in North Korea has led to the omission of detailed circumstances of providing support. Since the review of China's support and the North Korea-China medical exchanges has been concentrated in the period after the mid-1950s, the impacts of China's medical support on North Korea during the Korean War period and the post-war recovery period have not been taken into account. In terms of these limitations, this study examined the medical activities by the Socialist camp of the Eastern European countries in North Korea after the Korean War. The medical aid teams from Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Poland, and East Germany that came to North Korea in the wake of the Korean War continued to stay in North Korea after the war to build hospitals and train medical personnel. In the hospitals operated by these countries, cooperative medical care with North Korean medical personnel and medical technology education were conducted. Moreover, medical teams from each country in North Korea held seminars and conferences and exchanged knowledge with the North Korean medical field staffs. These activities by the Socialist countries in North Korea provided the North Korean medical personnel with the opportunity to directly experience the medical technology of each country. China's support was crucial to North Korea's ‘rediscovery’ of Korean medicine in the mid-1950s. After the Korean War, North Korea began to apply the Chinese-Western medicine integration policy, which was performed in China at that time, to the North Korean health care field through China's medical support and exchanges. In other words, China's emphasis on Chinese medicine and the integration of the Chinese-Western medicine were presented as one of the directions for medical development of North Korea in the 1950s, and the experiences of China in this process convinced North Korea that Korean medicine policy was appropriate. The decision-makers of the North Korean medical policies, who returned to North Korea after studying abroad in China at that time, actively introduced the experiences from China and constantly sought to learn about them. This study identified that a variety of external stimuli had complex impacts on the North Korean medical field in the gap between ‘Soviet learning’ in the late 1940s and the ‘autonomous’ medical development since the 1960s. The North Korean medical field was formed not by the unilateral or dominant influences of a single nation but by the stimulation from many nations and the various interactions in the process.
Asian Continental Ancestry Group ; Bulgaria ; China ; Congresses as Topic ; Czechoslovakia ; Delivery of Health Care ; Democratic People's Republic of Korea ; Education ; Germany ; Humans ; Hungary ; Korean War ; Learning ; Poland ; Romania ; USSR

This paper examines WHO's involvement in South Korea within the context of the changing organization of public health infrastructure in Korea during the years spanning from the end of the Japanese occupation, through the periods of American military occupation and the Korean War, and to the early years of the Park Chung Hee regime in the early 1960s, in order to demonstrate how tuberculosis came to be addressed as a public health problem. WHO launched several survey missions and relief efforts before and during the Korean War and subsequently became deeply involved in shaping government policy for public health through a number of technical assistance programs, including a program for tuberculosis control in the early 1960s. This paper argues that the principal concern for WHO was to start rebuilding the public health infrastructure beyond simply abolishing the remnants of colonial practices or showcasing the superiority of American practices vis-à-vis those practiced under a Communist rule. WHO consistently sought to address infrastructural problems by strengthening the government's role by linking the central and regional health units, and this was especially visible in its tuberculosis program, where it attempted to take back the responsibilities and functions previously assumed by voluntary organizations like the Korea National Tuberculosis Administration (KNTA). This interest in public health infrastructure was fueled by WHO's discovery of a cost-effective, drug-based, and community-oriented horizontal approach to tuberculosis control, with a hope that these practices would replace the traditional, costly, disease-specific, and seclusion-oriented vertical approach that relied on sanatoria. These policy imperatives were met with the unanticipated regime change from a civilian to a military government in 1961, which created an environment favorable for the expansion of the public health network. Technology and politics were intricately intertwined in the emergence of a new infrastructure for public health in Korea, as this case of tuberculosis control illustrates.
Asian Continental Ancestry Group ; Global Health ; Hope ; Humans ; Korea ; Korean War ; Military Personnel ; Occupations ; Politics ; Public Health ; Religious Missions ; Tuberculosis ; World Health Organization

The Korean Society for Thoracic and Cardiovascular Surgery (KTCVS) was founded in 1968 and celebrated the 50th anniversary of its founding in 2018. The launch of the KTCVS may seem somewhat recent, given that the American Association for Thoracic Surgery was founded in 1917. However, considering the circumstances of the Korean medical community after the Japanese occupation (1910–1945), World War II (1940–1945), and the Korean War (1950–1953), this apparent delay is understandable. Even before the foundation of the KTCVS, the early pioneers of thoracic and cardiovascular surgery promptly adopted medical technologies from more advanced countries such as the United States, and contributed significantly to both cardiac and thoracic surgery despite difficult circumstances. In 2012, before the 50th anniversary of the founding of the KTCVS, members shared the opinion that objective records of the activities of the early pioneers should be identified and preserved, and reacted positively towards the necessity for historians who would preserve such records. With this background, the Historical Records Preservation Committee of the KTCVS (hereinafter, referred to as ‘the Committee’) was launched. The Committee published a white paper on the history of thoracic and cardiovascular surgery in 2015 and held an exhibition of the achievements of the pioneers at the 50th anniversary of the founding of the KTCVS. The Committee also published a book entitled “The history of Korean thoracic surgery with photographs: celebrating the 50th anniversary of the society.” The Committee will keep making efforts to find and preserve materials related to activities during the early development of thoracic and cardiovascular surgery in Korea.
Anniversaries and Special Events ; Asian Continental Ancestry Group ; Humans ; Korea ; Korean War ; Occupations ; Thoracic Surgery ; United States ; World War II

This article attempts to review the reality of rural health care in Korea from the 1960s to the 1980s by analyzing the Daegok Diary. There has been two myths about rural healthcare. One is that the absence of institutional medicine was replaced by folk medicine, which could be identified with folk remedies or shamanic healing distinguished from Western medicine. This is a frame that understands institutional and Western medicine as a pair and folk medicine and traditional medicine as another. Another popular belief is that rural healthcare had remained almost nonexistent, and only dramatically improved after the Regional Health Insurance was implemented. Of course, some claim that the Regional Health Insurance was disadvantageous to farmers, but it is generally understood that there was an absence of government policy regarding medical care. The Daegok Diary, telling many aspects of rural life, is a good source to reflect on these common notions. Unlike other farmers' diaries, the diary of Shin Kwonsik contains a wealth of medical culture records because he chose unique ways to cure his and neighbors' illnesses by himself. It can be summarized as the life of “quasi-doctor”. Shin was distinguished from quacks in that he practiced as an intellectual in the village rather than as a profession, and that he learned official medical knowledge and recognized the difference between a licensed physician and himself. Also, he was different from doctors because of the lack of a medical license and the limited range of diseases that he could treat. The life of quasi-doctor shows the social structure of rural areas in Korea from the 1960s to the 1980s. The reality of rural healthcare can be summarized in two ways. First, the medical vacuum was filled by civilian efforts. There was virtually no institutional healthcare in rural areas, but the government did little to improve the situation . The policy of sending doctors to the countryside proved to be ineffective, and the community doctor system did not work properly. Health Insurance was also a system for city workers rather than farmers. In the late 1970s, the situation only slightly improved due to reasons unrelated to the government policy regarding rural healthcare. These were improvements in traffic conditions and the increasing popularity of private insurance, which improved the physical and economic accessibility to medical institutions. Second, Western medicine had become a part of folk medicine. Those who could not go to a hospital utilized Western medicine, which had penetrated the folk medical culture. When people were sick, they bought Western drugs from pharmacies, drug dealers, and sometimes quacks. The knowledge of Western medicine also spread widely, with family medical books such as Million People's Medicine as the medium. These two characteristics show that the existing myths that regard the absence of government policy as that of medical care and interpret the medical vacuum as the prevalence of folk remedies and shamanic healing are far from the truth. From the 1960s to the 1980s, gaps in institutional medicine was filled by Western medicine which had become part of the folk medicine already, and the accessibility of institutional medicine was improved through civilian efforts. Of course, the Daegok Diary shows more than the social structure of rural areas. It also reveals a lot about the man who wrote it, Shin Kwonsik. Unlike the others, Shin chose to become a quasi-doctor because of his separation from the tradition and his desire to learn. He grew up alone without parental care and later moved to Seoul by himself. This meant a break with the tradition. He joined the army in the wake of the Korean War and learned how to give injections there. After he was discharged, he devoured many books and newspapers including Million People's Medicine. In short, the existence of a quasi-doctor like Shin was the result of the combination of the absence of institutional medicine, the predominance of Western medicine, and the characteristic of Shin as a ‘learning modern.’
Delivery of Health Care* ; Farmers* ; Humans ; Insurance ; Insurance, Health ; Korea ; Korean War ; Licensure ; Medicine, Traditional ; Parents ; Periodicals ; Pharmacies ; Prevalence ; Rural Health ; Seoul ; Vacuum

Western medicine was first introduced to Korea by Christian missionaries and then by the Japanese in the late 19th century without its historical, philosophical, cultural, social, political, and economic values being communicated. Specifically, during the Japanese colonial era, only ideologically ‘degenerated’ medicine was taught to Koreans and the main orthodox stream of medicine was inaccessible. Hence, Korean medical education not only focuses on basic and clinical medicine, but also inherited hierarchical discrimination and structural violence. After Korea's liberation from Japan and the Korean war, the Korean medical education system was predominantly influenced by Americans and the Western medical education system was adopted by Korea beginning in the 1980s. During this time, ethical problems arose in Korean medical society and highlighted a need for medical humanities education to address them. For Korean medical students who are notably lacking humanistic and social culture, medical humanities education should be emphasized in the curriculum. In the Fourth Industrial Revolution, human physicians may only be distinguishable from robot physicians by ethical consciousness; consequentially, the Korean government should invest more of its public funds to develop and establish a medical humanities program in medical colleges. Such an improved medical education system in Korea is expected to foster talented physicians who are also respectable people.
Aptitude ; Asian Continental Ancestry Group ; Clinical Medicine ; Consciousness ; Curriculum ; Discrimination (Psychology) ; Education ; Education, Medical ; Ethics, Medical ; Financial Management ; Humanities ; Humans ; Japan ; Korea ; Korean War ; Missionaries ; Rivers ; Societies, Medical ; Students, Medical ; Violence

In 1951, in the midst of the Korean War, artist Lee Quede produced anatomical drawings to teach artistic anatomy to his student Lee Ju-yeong while interned in the Geoje prison camp. Comprising 2 books and spanning over 48 pages, 74 drawings were produced alongside explanations in a textbook format. The table of contents was ordered starting from body proportions, then the skeleton, the muscles, and the head. By part, there were 4 drawings of the trunk, 51 of the head, 7 of the arms, 9 of the legs, and 3 of the full body. Though the drawings of the head and face are both high in number and in detail, there were many errors in his depictions of the bones, and the boundaries between the structures of his muscle drawings were drawn so unclearly as to be indistinguishable. The essential forms, proportions and movement are included, but his disproportionate dedication to the head and the incoherent way that the book is arranged with no relevance to its table of contents leave something to be desired. It is regrettable that Lee Quede's return to North Korea meant that his drawings were not widely used, but despite this, I believe that these are invaluable documents in assessing the influence of Japanese artistic anatomy at the time, as well as the introductory circumstances of Korean artistic anatomy.
Anatomy, Artistic ; Arm ; Asian Continental Ancestry Group ; Democratic People's Republic of Korea ; Gyeongsangnam-do ; Head ; Humans ; Korean War ; Leg ; Muscles ; Prisons ; Skeleton

The late Prof. Kyeok Boo Han (1913–2005) was one of the pioneers in the early stages of the establishment of thoracic surgery in Korea. He was in charge of thoracic surgery at Seoul National University Hospital from 1948 to the outbreak of the Korean War in 1950. He presented a thoracic surgical case entitled “Adhesive (constrictive) pericarditis: one surgical case” at the first academic meeting of the Chosun (an old name for Korea) Medical Association, held in 1947. This presentation is considered to be the first thoracic surgical case presented by a Korean surgeon at a domestic medical meeting after the National Liberation from Japanese colonial rule in 1945. In this regard, this study was intended to analyze the content and the meaning of the case, published in a journal in 1948.
Asian Continental Ancestry Group ; Humans ; Korea ; Korean War ; Pericarditis ; Seoul ; Thoracic Surgery

This paper investigates the discourses and policies on narcotics in Republic of Korea from 1945 to 1960. Since the Liberation the narcotic problem was regarded as the vestige of Japanese imperialism. which was expected to be cleaned up. The image of narcotic crimes as the legacy of the colonial past was turned into as the result of the Red Army's tactics to attack on the liberalist camp around the Korean war. The government of ROK represented the source of the illegal drugs as the Red army and the spy from North Korea. The anticommunist discourse about narcotics described the spies, who introduced the enormous amount of poppies into ROK and brought about the addicts, as the social evil. Through this discourse on poppies from North Korea, the government of ROK emphasized the immorality of the communists reinforcing the anticommunist regime, which was inevitable for the government of ROK to legitimize the division of Korea and the establishment of the government alone. This paper examines how the discourses and policies on narcotics in ROK was shaped and transformed from 1945 to 1960 focusing the relationship between the them and the political context such as anticommunism, Korean war, the division of Korea, and etc. This approach would be helpful to reveal the effect of the ROK's own political situation to the public health system involving the management for drugs.
Asian Continental Ancestry Group ; Crime ; Democratic People's Republic of Korea ; Humans ; Korea ; Korean War ; Narcotics ; Papaver ; Public Health ; Republic of Korea*

Male circumcision (MC) is one of the most common surgical procedures in the world, but its medical benefits remain under debate. In the context of evidence-based medicine, MC is beneficial in reducing the risks of infantile urinary tract infection, viral-mediated sexually transmitted diseases, penile/cervical cancers, and poor hygiene. The claims of opponents against MC, such as reduced sexual performance, psychological trauma, and an excess of complications, are gradually losing credibility. Possibly influenced by US troops stationed in Korea following the Korean War, MC is highly prevalent in South Korea, though it has been losing popularity recently. The practice of MC in Korea is different from that in other countries, in that most cases of MC are performed in adolescence under local anesthesia. Although this eliminates the benefit of reducing urinary tract infection in neonates, it still offers the benefits of reducing the risk of viral sexually transmitted diseases and penile/cervical cancers. Moreover, MC can lead to improved hygiene for the majority of Koreans who are willing to undergo the procedure. The practice of MC in adolescence may reduce the risk of significant complications, though the risk of bleeding may be higher than for neonates.
Adolescent ; Anesthesia, Local ; Circumcision, Male* ; Evidence-Based Medicine ; Female ; Hemorrhage ; Humans ; Hygiene ; Infant, Newborn ; Korea ; Korean War ; Male ; Male* ; Phimosis ; Psychological Trauma ; Sexually Transmitted Diseases ; Sexually Transmitted Diseases, Viral ; Urinary Tract Infections

This paper aims to reveal how Hamheung Medical College in North Korea kept up its faculty with the trend of a new political system. The time period consists of three series of evaluations that occurred between the start of a reformation action in 1946 and the establishment of the regime in 1948. At the time, it was difficult to secure college faculty in the medical field, because of a serious shortage of medical personnel. Moreover, the problem in the recruitment of faculty at the medical college grew bigger since the members were required to have a high level of political consciousness. Then how did Hamheung Medical College accomplish this ideal securing of faculty that possessed political ideology and medical expertise? For the first time, a faculty evaluation at the local level was carried out and got rid of a few pro-Japanese or reactionary factions but maintained most of the faculty. Although academic background and research career of the faculty were considered, securing of the manpower in terms of number was crucial for the reconstruction of a professional school level. At the second time, as the central education bureau's intervention tightened the censorship, most of the faculty were evaluated as unqualified. Indeed, it was difficult to satisfy the standard of professionalism which emphasized a high level of academic career and political thought that included affiliation of Workers' Party of North Korea. The Medical College could not find faculty that could replace those professors and therefore, most of them maintained their faculty positions. Since then, the faculty who received excellent evaluations led the school at the very front. At the third time, the Medical College itself led the evaluations and implemented more relaxed standards of political ideology and medical expertise. Faculty who were cooperative to the reformation actions that North Korea carried forward or had working experience at the hospital and health service received a high level of recognition. Accordingly, the Medical College expanded itself by securing many professors, but also embodied a large gap of academic and ideological levels between them. Hence, the political ideology and medical expertise, which were set forth as the requirements for faculty, were constructed in the space of political ideal and social reality. Despite the high criteria the North Korean Government made, Hamheung Medical College's faculty fell below the average in terms of ideological and academic standards. As a way to compensate this, professors who greatly satisfied the both virtues were placed as leaders and, for supporting them, professors who taught the general education curriculum were recruited largely. And also, it appointed a large number of medical doctors who accumulated experiences in the field as new professors. Nevertheless, the Medical College struggled to raise the quality of medical education and was unable to prevent a part of its faculty from leaving to South Korea in the time of the Korean War. Thus, the political and academic virtues of the faculty at that time were not just simply about the professor individuals but were interrelated with the medical education and health care system in North Korea.
Consciousness ; Curriculum ; Delivery of Health Care ; Democratic People's Republic of Korea* ; Education ; Education, Medical ; Health Services ; Humans ; Korea ; Korean War ; Political Systems ; Virtues