YI Kwang Su's Love and history records of modern hospital under the japanese colonial period

LEE, Byoung Hoon

Abstract

This article aims to evaluate and analyze the description of the modern hospital as history record, which appeared in YI Kwang Su's novel Love. This novel has mentioned in detail western style clinic, Bukgando Catholic hospital, tuberculosis sanitarium as its main space. Modern hospitals are depicted in the novel has a great significance in historical aspect as well as in literary aspect. The most data on modern hospital is laws, statistics and newspaper archives. These materials are a great help to understand the history and status of the modern hospital. Literary description here is important materials, that specific to reconstruct the appearance of the modern hospital at that time. Literary representations infuse life into the history record. In this regard, Love has special meaning in the history of Korean modern literature. Before anything else, doctor AN Bin's clinic as a first space of the novel vividly shows the reality of the Western style clinic and a general practitioner under the colonial period. The establishment of the hospital was based on âŒœRules on private hospitalâŒŸ declared by the Japanese Government General of Korea in 1919. According to this Rules, a private clinic's founder had to submit the documents to the director of police affairs, in which all the details were written. It included name of hospital, site location and size, floor plan of a nearby building, each size of patient's rooms, number of steps and emergency exit, bath, toilet, disinfecting room. AN Bin's clinic was a private hospital with the requirements in the rules. The descriptions of this clinic re-created real situation of private hospitals, specifically scale of hospital, interior space, conditions of patient's room at the time. The second modern hospital in the novel is Bukgando Catholic hospital. There is a lot more materials on medical activity and hospital of protestant churches than we thought. But we do not have a lot of information on catholic church's medical activities and hospital. In this respect, Bukgando Catholic hospital in Love has a great value as historical material. The medical activity of catholic churches was weak than protestant's one under the japanese colonial period. But there were catholic church's medical activities and hospitals. The catholic church's professional medical activities are mainly deployed since the 1930s in earnest, especially Bukgando Catholic hospital played an important role. The catholic hospital in this novel is valuable material to understand medical activities of catholic church. Third form of the modern hospital described in the Love is tuberculosis sanitarium. WADA Tomomi maintained that the model of Bukhan sanitarium was Kyeongseong sanitarium, that was established by the seventh-day adventist in 1936. She thinks, that the adventist church's treatment is similar to Bukhan sanitarium's. The therapy of the adventist church, however, was common from tuberculosis treatment at the time and AN Bin was not adventist. And WADA Tomomi said that "˜ozone' therapy of Bukhan sanitarium came from Kyeongseong sanitarium. But we can find this therapy in Haeju sanitarium. In this respect, AN Bin's sanitarium is similar to Haeju sanitarium. YI Kwang Su had not modeled his Bukhan sanitarium on certain sanitarium. He had integrated the materials on sanitarium and envisioned Bukhan sanitarium. Here Haeju sanitarium played important role than Kyeongseong sanitarium. In conclusion, Love has a special meaning as an important historical material, that restore and understand the history of the modern hospital. Literature is worth as a record of the society. In particular, novel infuses human breath into the history record, as if we can see the motion picture.