An Analysis of a North Korean Medical Journal: In-Min-Bo-Gun (People's Health) in 1950s

Kim, Ock Joo

Abstract

Studies on medicine in North Korea have suffered from the lack of material and from the lack of reliability of information. So far, studies on North Korean medicine have centered on the health care system, and medical education system based upon the official data and interviews on refugees from North Korea. The author had a travel grant for archive research to National Archive Center II and Library of Congress from Association of Asian Studies in U.S.A. and photocopied volumes of a North Korean medical journal called In-Min-Bo-Gun(People's Health) published in 1949-1950, and 1957-1960 Captured by the U. S. Army during the Korean War and declassified in 1977 the journal volumes are rare and valuable resources for historical study. This study aims to analyze the form and contents of the available volumes of the journal. As an official journal of the Ministry of Health, North Korea, the primary purpose of the journal was to mobilize all the people who worked in medicine and public health, and to make them implement the public health policies of North Korean government. Accordingly, various categories of people wrote and read the journal from high officials to local public health workers. The genre of the articles published in the journal was also various including papers, declarations, speeches, reports, scientific papers, case reports, news, criticism, conte, poem, essays, and many more. This study showed that In-Min-Bo-Gun(People's Health) was at the center of the Hygiene Reform Movement during the Cultural Revolution from 1958-1959 as an important media that connected health workers and the North Korean government.