Korea's Health Care Policy of the Twentieth Century

Lee, Jong Chan

Abstract

This article analyzes the social transformation of Korea's health care policy in the twentieth century from a historical perspective. The whole period under the research is divided into four stages. In the first stage(1900-1945), two major health care policies, public hygiene and population control, were a part of political strategy for consolidating Japanese colonial dominion over Korea. The second stage(1945-1960) is characterized by the division of Korean peninsula and Korean war that resulted in the vicious cycle between massive poverty and social disease. In the third stage(1961-1991), military governments considered the health care system as a 'carrot' for enhancing national security and reinforcing legitimacy of the regime. In the final stage(1992-1999), the state and civil society have been influential agents in shaping forms and contents of health care policy, with the organized medicine relatively neglected. Globalization will have more influence on the arena of health care policy in which three agents would have to negotiate one another. In addition, the organized medicine will have to consider a variety of non-governmental organizations(NGOs) as an inevitable counterpart of policy-making process. in harmonizing the conflicts between public deliberation and professional interests. In the next century, health care policy, along with social welfare, environment and labor policy agendas would constitute a health-related policy regime in which all the participants have to accomplish not medicalization of life but socialization of health care and to diminish the inequity in health among a variety of social class.