백신 부작용과 국가책임

Abstract

Vaccines remain an unstable and controversial technology in South Korean society, as evidenced by the adverse event debate during the COVID-19 vaccine rollout. The Korean government's primary policy response to this has been to implement a comprehensive immunization compensation system that provides state-level compensation to those who experience harm, even if a direct causal link to vaccination cannot be proven. Although South Korea's immunization compensation system was enacted in 1994 and fully implemented in 1995, government, medical, and public debates surrounding it have been ongoing since the mass vaccination campaigns of Korea. This study examines how attempts to manage vaccine adverse events in Korea have been shaped by conflicts between government, medical professionals, and the public over vaccination, particularly over adverse events. At the same time, the technical limitations of each vaccine led to questions of safety, and these limitations shaped the public's perceptions of effectiveness and trust in individual vaccines. This study focuses on three of the most widely recognized vaccine-related adverse reactions: the typhoid vaccine of the 1960s, the DPT vaccine of the 1970s, and the Japanese encephalitis vaccine of the 1990s. These cases reveal that state-oriented disease control initiatives were not always successful in mobilizing the public and medical personnel unilaterally, but rather that there were various resistances and backlash, requiring detailed policies such as “no-fault” compensation systems to manage them. Furthermore, these cases suggest that for future systematic vaccine policy formulation, it is necessary to build a historical understanding of the technical limitations of individual vaccines and the experiences and responses to their adverse effects, rather than analyzing vaccine policy as a single entity.