Joseon GovernmentGeneral’s Policy of Local Medicine and Local Consumptions of Medical Service

Since the beginning of the colonial ruling, the Joseon Government-General promoted a policy of expanding medical service provision to the local regions. The establishment of the Jahye Euiwon medical center, and the dispatching of public medical practitioners in the 1910s, were part of that policy. And in the following decades, the number of local medical centers increased. Yet in the 1920s, the colonial government decided a course correction, and modified its previous policy to actually decrease the financial burden put upon the government’s fiscal status. As a result, Oriental medicine that had been ignored for some time, started to get attention in the 1930s. Compared to Western medicine, it took lesser cost to spread and implement them in local regions. In spite of increase in the overall number of medical facilities, local population was still agonizing over the insufficiency of such medical support. Compared to the situation in the Japanese mainland, and also Taiwan, another country that was colonized by Japan, Korea’s situation was fairly poor. And the medical centers established in local regions were not that much accessible, from the local residents’ point of view. Provincial medical centers practiced medicine based upon their own pursuit of profits, and public medical practitioners were also independent doctors who had to pursue their own interest. In order to enhance the healthcare level of the local residents, the implementation of a basic medical system was argued as well. The overall idea behind that argument was to abolish the public medical practitioner system, and station sanitary technicians at every police station, and then launch a national healthcare insurance system for the residents in agricultural and fishing areas. Yet the Government-General maintained their position, and only continued to increase the number of medical centers and public medical practitioners. It was because they figured that increasing facilities and entities would actually cost less than launching an entire insurance system. To the Joseon Government-General, the issue of medical support, was only a matter of provision(rather than a matter that should be considered through the recipients’ perspective).ope