Kŭndaegi ŭiryo yulli rosŏŭi Insul ŭi chaet'ansaeng [A Study on ‘Insul (An Art of Benevolence)’: Formation of Korean Medical Ethics in Modern Korea]

“Medicine is an art of benevolence [Kr. 인술 Insul, Ch. 仁術 Renshu].” This slogan is widely accepted in East Asia, and at least in South Korea, it is generally regarded as an innate medical ethic. However, the original meaning of ‘In’ (仁, Ch. Ren), which means ‘benevolence,’ ‘humanity,’ or simply ‘love for one another,’ is a Confucian virtue emphasized by Mencius. It is unclear when this Confucian term became the representative medical ethic in South Korea. The term “medical ethic” was not coined until the 19th century in the West (Robert Baker and Laurence B. McCullough, eds. 2009). We often use the terms ‘Insul,’ ‘affection,’ ‘Hippocratic Oath,’ and other related concepts interchangeably, but these words come from different times and have different ideological implications (Shin 2000). This paper examines how ‘Insul’ has been recreated under the tensions between Western and Eastern Medicine in modern Korea. The arrival of Western medicine caused an existential crisis in traditional Korean medicine. The status of TKM doctors was demoted by the ‘Uisaeng Regulation’ in 1913 by the JGGK, which aimed to establish a unicameral medical system based on Western medicine. In response, the scientification of Eastern medicine became an inevitable task, and Eastern medicine had to maintain its identity while also modernizing itself to avoid being absorbed into Western medicine. Until the late Joseon period, ‘Insul’ was rarely used in medicine but rather for political practices. Medical practice was a peripheral way of conducting Ren (仁), the Confucian benevolence. However, TKM rediscovered the concept during the modern era. With the Convention of Korean Uisaeng in October 1915, the TKM community actively used ‘Insul’ as their identity. At this convention, Governor General Terauchi Mastake used the term to mean traditional medicine and implied that without scientification, ‘Insul’ would be disused. This address was immediately and widely quoted in TKM journals. TKM doctors and adherents interpreted his address to mean that if they could achieve scientification of TKM, their medical ideal (Insul) would be used in the future. Soon, a number of articles on ‘Insul’ as a medical ethic were published in newspapers and journals. From the mid-1920s, regardless of whether the doctors practiced East or West medicine, people started to claim that only those who pursued ‘Insul’ were true medical personnel, and they used this as a criterion for evaluating medical doctors. The people’s demand for ‘Insul’ influenced medicine in general, and Western doctors also linked their medical practices to ‘Insul.’ This is an interesting example of the localization of Western medicine in Korea. Through the rivalry relationship or interaction between East and West medicine that took place in modern Korea, ‘Insul’ gradually became a representative term of Korean medical ethics since the mid-1920s. The process took place gradually over a decade, and it has now become firmly established throughout medicine in Korea.