ABSTRACT
Immediately after the liberation, the health care system debate was studied focusing on the orientation of the American and Soviet medical systems, roughly divided into Lee Yong-seol and Choi Eung-seok. However, the existence of people who are not explained in the American and Soviet health care systems’ orientation led to the need to reconsider the existing premise. Therefore, this study identifies the characters that were not explained in the perspective of existing studies, and reevaluates the arguments of Lee Yong-seol and Choi Eung-seok.This paper raises the following questions: First, what is the background of the policy orientation that Lee Yong-seol and Choi Eung-seok had? Second, if there are people who made different arguments from Lee Yong-seol and Choi Eung-seok, what direction did they set and argue? third, how the orientations of Lee Yong-seol and Choi Eung-seok and etc. converge into the answer to the Joint Soviet-American Commission?In response to theses questions, this study confirms the following: first, Lee Yong-seol’s and Choi Eung-seok’s health care policies were established based on realism and empiricism. As a policyholder, Lee Yong-seol emphasized withholding medical state administration and raising the level of medical education and medical systems according to the condition at that time, although the American system was mobilized by Lee as the basis for his judgment and administrative assets. On the other hand, Choi Eung-seok aimed for a Soviet-style systems in health care but this was realistically put on hold. Choi insisted on the establishment of the Medical Service Associations and rural cooperative hospitals that appeared in Japan’s medical socialization movement. In summary, immediately after the liberation, Lee Yong-seol’s and Choi Eung-seok’s policy arguments were based on policies that could be implemented in Korea, and the American system and Soviet system served as criteria for the policy resources.Second, Jeong Gu-chung and Kim Yeon-ju show that the topography of the health care debate immediately after the liberation was not represented only by Lee Yong-seol and Choi Eung-seok. Both Jeong and Kim were consequently led to medical socialization, which was the implementation of a health care system that encompasses social reform, but the context was different. Jeong drew the hierarchy of the health care system, which peaked in the United States, from the perspective of social evolution based on his eugenics, but the representation suitable for Korea was the Soviet model absorbed into his understanding. On the contrary, Kim argued that representations suitable for Korea should be found in Korea. As national medical care, Kim’s idea aimed at a medical state administration that provides equal opportunities for all Koreans.Third, the aspect of convergence to the Joint Soviet-American Commission reply proposal was complicated. Among the policies of Lee Yong-seol, the promotion of missionary medical institutions and the gradual planning of medical institutions converged into the three organizations’ proposal, and Choi Eung-seok’s policy was almost the same as that of the Democracy National Front and the South Korean Labor Party. However, the medical system of Japan, the colonial home country, appears to have been based on Lee Gap-soo, chairman of the Korean Medical Association in the colonial period, and the plan was in line with the use of the union system of the left-wing organizations’ proposal in the south. It was in accordance with a common task to expand health care from colonial conditions to different status.
ABSTRACT
Born in Pyongyang in 1914, Choe Ung-sok was a physician who lived through the Japanese colonial era (1910-1945), rule by the United States Army Military Government in Korea (USAMGIK; 1945-1948), and national division (1948). Influenced by socialism and social hygiene/social medicine during his studies in Japan, he played the role of representing the socialist camp in the discussions related to the construction of a heath care system immediately following the Liberation (1945). His key arguments were: first, the nationalization of the medical system and the implementation of nationwide programs to eradicate diseases; second, the provision of free medical services through the expansion of social insurance; third, the reeducation of the medical personnel; fourth, the provision of social sciences education to the medical personnel and the reorganization of medicine into preventive medicine; fifth, the nationalization of pharmaceutics; sixth, the laborers' establishment of autonomous medical organs (affordable clinics, medical consumers' unions through cooperatives); and seventh, the reduction of work hours to 6-8 hours, technical improvement, respite from research, and guarantee of economic life for the medical personnel. Influenced by the medical systems of the Soviet Union and Japan, such arguments stood in opposition to the right wing's plan for the construction of a relatively passive health care system at the time but, in the end, failed to be realized in southern part of Korea under the USAMGIK. Subsequently, he defected to northern part of Korea and came to participate in the task of constructing North Korea's health care system. Choe's life and design for a health care system provide examples through which one can confirm the nature of social hygiene/social medicine both during the Japanese colonial era and before and after the Liberation and the contents of the design related to a health care system as held by the socialist faction. In addition, they show that, immediately after the Liberation, there existed a broad spectrum of imagination and arguments concerning the desirable health care system. Following the division of the Korean Peninsula, South Korea witnessed the instatement of a regime that established anti-communism as the state policy and the strong influence of the United States in politics, economy, and culture. The consequent frustration of Choe's design for a health care system and his defection to North Korea frustrated the creation of a National Heath Service (NHS) in South Korea, reinforced the tendency to view NHS and social insurance as "socialist" or "communist" methods, and led to the restriction of the scope of subsequent discussions related to health care system. In conclusion, the course of Choe's life and thought went beyond the life of an individual during a period in which diverse ideologies collided through the Japanese colonial era, Liberation, and national division and symbolically demonstrates one important path of the process of constructing a health care system on the Korean Peninsula.