This study examined the ideals of the medical circles, which sought to promote individuals' health by the state how it was realized after liberation. As shown by the fact that most people today manage their health through private institutions, health ...
This study examined the ideals of the medical circles, which sought to promote individuals' health by the state how it was realized after liberation. As shown by the fact that most people today manage their health through private institutions, health centers, which started from the ideal of the medical circles, faced limitations in reality. The review of this process is an important topic to understand the attempts of health care by the state and its limitations. Furthermore, it can be a starting point to understand the rise of private-centered health care methods, which are characteristic of Korean health care today.
After liberation, After liberation, the medical circles formed a health concept not only under the influence of American public health, but also in a sense of problem with the Japanese sanitary administration. It was how the state promoted individual health in a democratic and preventive medical way. The medical circles wanted to implement this ideal by health centers established by the U.S. military government. However, early health centers operated like a treatment institution in the face of a lack of health concepts and poor medical conditions.
The Korean War strengthened this trend by making health centers run as relief clinics. This continued after the 1963 revision of Health Center Law. Meanwhile, the health center's prevention project, which the medical circles emphasized, was selectively implemented. Health centers failed to autonomously implement preventive projects in accordance with local health conditions or needs. Budget and manpower were concentrated on tuberculosis management projects and family planning projects linked to economic development, which is a national policy. It was an clear indication that the health center was operated by the logic of national development, rather than by its own logic of improving the health of local residents. Health was emerging as a subordinate value to national development.
After all, health centers did not become preventive medical institutions, unlike earlier ideal, nor did they fully improve the health of local residents. Since 1967, the Park Chung-hee administration has announced more active health care plan than before, but it did not overcome existing limitations. In a situation where health values are subordinate to national development, health was only implemented to support economic growth, as a result, private health care was filling the medical vaccum.
Keyword: Public health, Preventive medicine, Dispensary, Health center, Health unit, Rural health, Doctorless village, Tuberculosis management, Family planning, Postcolonial orientation