The Emergence and the Institutional Changes of Medical Doctors as a Modern Profession in Korea

The purpose of this study is to examine at what point doctors with modern medical knowledge appeared in Korea and to analyze how their professional values were created and sustained by focusing on changes in the medical and licensing system. The period of this study was from the late 19th century until the establishment of a new medical system by the the Korean government, the National Medicine Services Law (國民醫療法), in 1951. In the late 19th century, Western medicine was introduced, and since that time, Korean medical practitioners have engaged in it. They have been officially qualified during the Korean Empire period, in the process of defining manpower for national medical care. Regulations have been enacted continuously for medical doctors who practice medicine based on Western medical education, although qualification standards and roles have changed from 1900 to the period after the libration in 1945. Physicians were guaranteed their professional status by graduating from a designated medical school or by taking a medical licensing examination. Graduating from a designated medical school was the more common method for obtaining a license, but the Japanese Empire altered the medical during the war years in the early 1940s. This change in policy had an impact on Colonial Korea’s medical policy, which had been in effect until then. As a result, the number of medical doctors receiving their medical license through a licensing test increased. Shortly after the Korean liberation, the United States Army Military Government in Korea (USAMGIK) reorganized the medical system and actively used medical doctors as health care administrators. Ironically, the change in policy during the Pacific war increased the number of candidates for the medical licensing examination, and the shortage of medical doctors in Korea was filled shortly after liberation. Later, medical doctors who received modern medical education and obtained a medical license through the Korean Medical Licensing Examination (醫師國家考試) under the enactment of the National Medicine Services Law in 1951, emerged as the most important sector of medical personnel in the process of rebuilding the country.restrictio