Reformation of the Medical Educational Institutes and Training of General Doctors during the Early Period of Japanese Rule

Park, Yun jae

Abstract

The Japanese government downgraded a Korean medical college being attached to the Daehan hospital to a medical training center blaming upon a lack of education in Korea. But the actual curriculum and the years required for completing a course of study in the Korean medical college were equivalent to those of the Japanese medical college. Furthermore, the Japanese government discarded the financial support for medical school students. So they should pay their tuitions and other stipends by themselves. The Japanese government forced a private institute to establish an endowed school by the legal act of college. It enabled to classify a medical education system with the judicial support. For the example of Severance Medical School, it reformed faculty, curriculum and facility according to the legal standard of a college act. Therefore, Severance Medical School was able to be upgraded to a medical college. But there was a limitation even for the government schools under the colonial era. It was not possible to train important medical human resource who enabled to supervise the modern medical system in Korea. On one hand, almost every important medical human resource such as a military doctor, and a professor, who should have trained in Korea in the Great Han Period, was trained in Japan. On the other hand, fostering general doctors, who practiced medicine with hands-on experience, was the purpose of medical education in Korea whether the medical school was governmental or private. Since the purpose of Severance Medical College was to foster general doctors, it was able to grow within the colonial medical system. The purpose of medical missionaries, who promoted the spread of gospel with the western medical support, enforced the Japanese colonial logics that the Japanese government could educate and develop Korea with the introduction of western civilization. Although it was later comparing to the government medical school, Severance Medical College enabled to certify the medical license automatically to the graduates from the school. The reason that the Japanese government allowed for Severance Medical College to issue the automatic medical license was to keep the colonial structure of Japanese in Korea.