1930년대 초반 경성의 의료접근성 문제와 부립경비진료소 설치 논쟁

Abstract

Examined in this article is the level of medical service availability that existed inside the Gyeongseong area in the early 1930s, through the controversy that surrounded the issue of opening a Bu(city)-founded, low-cost medical facility (“Bu’rib Gyeongbi Jil’ryo-so”). This issue may shed some light on how social medical projects were utilized (or ‘used’) in the shifting of colonial ruling policies of the Japanese authorities in the 1930s.BR The Joseon people in the Gyeongseong area had been frustrated by the lack of Korean doctors among so many Japanese doctors, and were tired of fixed medical fees which was a result of the hospitals’ collusion. After the ‘Great depression,’ deterioration in the city population’s economic condition worsened, and medical fees came to be named as the main problem of the medical service availability issue. In response, the Joseon elites began to contemplate on the idea of opening a medical clinic, which would be charging the public with only low fees, therefore benefitting the Joseon people in general.BR The Gyeongseong-bu authorities, which were having all sorts of political and economic problems at the time, decided to utilize the “Donations to fund Social Projects” received from the Gyeongseong Electronics Corporation, and in September 1932, filed a plan to found a low-cost Medical clinic for citizens in the middle class and below. This plan was often called as the ‘Gyeong’jin-an,’ and the members of the City council(Buhwe), the press, and the Doctors association, all having different agendas and interests of their own, continued to debate the proper direction the overall efforts of raising medical service availability should take in the future.BR In the end, by emphasizing the plan’s nature as a ‘Social project (that could benefit the society)’ the Gyeongseong-bu authorities were able to earn the support of the public and have the plan approved by the City Council. Yet what the Gyeongseong-bu authorities really wanted was the stabilization of the class of people which the colonial ruling needed for the most. In the end, Gyeongseong-bu was able to prevent fiscal loss and even earned a reputation as striving for a ‘public medical facility.’BR So, we can see the plan for the so-called “Gyeongbi Jil’ryo-so” (low-cost clinic) that surfaced in 1932 did concentrate on preventing the fall of the middle class. It was a rare result of the interests of both the Joseon people and the Japanese colonial authorities meeting with each other, as the former needed to respond to the aftermath of the Great depression, while the former had to stabilize its own regime over the Joseon public.BR However, the medical facility proposed here, which was hailed as a ‘socially beneficial project,’ also played a role in hiding the systemic injustices of the colonial ruling, and to some extent even legitimatized the colonial authorities’ policies. And there was also another problem. The effort itself assumed the form of criticizing and attacking the selfishness of an interest group (in this case, private medical practitioners), yet in reality it also had the effect of blocking further discussions of the medical availability which should be provided to ‘the poor.’