History of medical ethics in Korea: focused on analysis of medical codes and covenants / 의사학

ABSTRACT

This article deals with the emergence of the codes of medical ethics and their change in Korean history. The modernized medical codes or covenants by the group of medical doctors has been made from the mid-twentieth century, although Korea has a long tradition of medical ethics, so called the Confucian medical ethics, Insul or Uido which were taken on very strong paternalistic characters. The history of the codes of medical ethics in contemporary Korea showed several revisions in 1961, 1965, 1979, and 1997 since the first establishment in 1955. Changes of political circumstances, the cultural level of the people, medical care system, and medical power leaded to the revisions. Throughout the revisions the codes or covenants of medical ethics in Korea has changed from simple translations of the codes by the World Medical Association and the American Medical Association to the reflexes of domestic medical situations; from the ones based on paternalistic doctor-patient relationship to more democratic ones; from the ones that only medical ethics were expressed to the ones that bioethics was expressed too.