A Study on the Korean Medicine Education and the Changes in the Traditional Korean Medicine during the Japanese Colonial Era: Focused on the Korean Medicine Training Schools

HUANG, Yongyuan

Abstract

The modern education institutes play an important role in fostering professional talents, reproducing knowledge and studies, and forming the identities of certain academic fields and vocational communities. It is a matter of common knowledge that the absence of an official Korean medicine medical school during the Japanese colonial era was a severely disadvantageous factor in the aspects of academic progress, fostering follow-up personnel, and establishment of social capability. Therefore, the then Korean medicine circle put emphasis on inadequate official education institutes as the main factor behind oppression. Furthermore, as the measure to promote the continuance of Korean medicine, the circle regarded establishing civilian Korean medicine training schools as their long-cherished wish and strived to accomplish the mission even after liberation. This study looked into how the Korean medicine circle during the Japanese colonial era utilized civilian training schools to conduct the Korean medicine education conforming to modern medical school and examined how the operation of these training schools influenced the changes in the traditional Korean medicine. After the introduction of the Western medical science, the Korean medicine circle aimed to improve the quality of Korean medicine doctors by establishing modern Korean medicine medical schools. However, after the annexation of Korea and Japan, official Korean medicine medical schools were not established since policies were organized centered on the Western medical science. In this light, the Korean medicine circle strived to nurture the younger generation of Korean medicine by establishing and operating the civilian Korean medicine training schools after the annexation between Korea and Japan. The schools were limited in terms of scale and status but possessed the forms conforming to the modern medical schools in terms of education system. In other words, the civilian training schools not only adhered to the standard education of Korean medicine but also aimed to lay their foundation in the education system of the Western medical science by forming the separated curriculum including basic medical science, diagnosis, clinic, drug, and the practice of acupuncture and moxibustion. Furthermore, having contained the basic subjects of the Western medical science - physiology, anatomy, pathology, etc. - in the compulsory subjects shows perceiving the intellectual and systematic hegemony of the Western medical science and satisfying the demand of the colonial power. Such an education system was succeeded and solidified through the training sessions and the training schools operated by the local colonial governments after the 1930s. Korean medicine became different from the traditional Korean medicine through the establishment and the operation of such training schools.