Revisiting Americanization: Focusing on the Reformation of Public Health in South Korea, 1945-1960

• Published in: Korea journal Vol. 62; no. 3; pp. 20 - 51
• Main Author: Park, Ji-young
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Seoul The Academy of Korean Studies 01.09.2022; Korean National Comission for UNESCO; 한국학중앙연구원
• Subjects: Cold War; Health behavior; Health care policy; Historians; Historiography; Institutional aspects; Postcolonialism; Public health; 한국어와문학; South Korea; colonial legacy; colonial medicine; Americanization; USAMGIK; reformation; continuity; public health
• ISSN: 0023-3900; 2733-9343
• DOI: 10.25024/kj.2022.62.3.20

Historians of post-colonial medicine in South Korea have understood a series of changes in the public health system during the Cold War era as an abrupt shift from a Japanese model to an American one. Challenging this perspective of alleged Americanization, this paper examines the continuity of a colonial medical legacy and its relationship with the newly established Americanstandard public health in the late 1940s and 1950s South Korea. Especially, this paper focuses on the intellectual aspect of public health that has been neglected in the historiography of public health, which to date has been limited to the administrative and institutional aspects of public health. By doing so, this paper aims to show how Japanese colonial medicine and American public health practices actively interacted with each other. Taking as case studies South Korea's doctors who studied public health in the United States with the support of the USAMGIK, this paper analyzes their academic activities on public health. By tracing the process of interaction between colonial medicine and American public health practices, this paper argues that the newly established American public health standards in the post-liberation era was a result of an entanglement between the Japanese colonial legacy and American public health.