The Korean Medicine is Korea's traditional medicine that is originated from Korea and developed through continuous exchange.
A combination of traditional Korean and East Asian medicine from the Korean Peninsula.
The world is facing an increase in chronic diseases due to an aging population. As a result, the medical community is shifting from treatment to prevention, and the demand for preventative traditional medicine is also on the rise. Korean Medicine boasts centuries of history as a remedy for diseases and holistic care. However, there are not many specialists of traditional medicine overseas that are aware of Korean Medicine. For such reason, this newsletter will introduce the past, present, and future of Korean Medicine.
Korean Medicine, a branch of East Asian medicine, originates from the Korean Peninsula and Liadong China, suggesting that it has been passed down and developed in the two areas that were previously inhabited by the Korean people of today.
The contents and medicinal properties have been steadily developed through exchanges with countries of Chinese origin-the father of East Asian medicine-and further east, contributing to medical development in Japan.
Korean Medicine is mainly composed of pharmaceutical treatments based on the medical theory of the Three Treasures (Jing-Qi-Shen) and acupuncture based on Meridian Theory. Practitioners have also developed various natural treatment techniques such as meditation and qigong, massage, and bone setting. The long development of natural treatment techniques has also affected the food and life culture, evolving to meet both nutritional and health needs using medicinal foods. In fact, one of the important principles of Korean Medicine is to find a healthy lifestyle, and this paradigm has led to a centralized culture on efficient use of life energy, thereby contributing to the realization of the value of medicine in food, daily activities, and culture.
DonguiBogam Anthology of Korean Medicine and World Cultural Heritage
Twelfth-century East Asia experienced an active increase in distribution and dissemination of information owing to the development of printing technology. Therefore, various efforts were made to improve the level of medicine of each country by sharing information with surrounding countries. At the time, Goryo Korea had strategically accepted the massive Chinese medical database and focused on the development of domestic medicine that could fully utilize the Chinese treatment techniques. By the fourteenth century, Korea had successfully established an infrastructure that could fully employ the medical techniques of China (which was then an advanced country in medicine) while using domestic medicine and medical professionals without imports.
The Joseon Dyansty was newly established on the Korean Peninsula in 1392, and the government strategically fostered an advanced healthcare system which became the basis for the national medicine of the new dynasty. In 1477, it published the Classified Collection of Medical Formulas (Euibang Yoochui), the greatest surviving database of East Asian medical information, and published the Treasured Mirror of Eastern Medicine (Dongui Bogam) in 1613, contributing to the medical development of surrounding countries including China and Japan.
As a result of such contribution, Dongui Bogam was listed as a UNESCO Memory of the World in 2009.
Korean Medicine Focusing on the basic nature of the human body that causes diseases
The most significant characteristic of Korean Medicine is that it focuses more on the basic nature of the human body that causes diseases rather than the disease itself. It particularly focuses on the specific pathophysiology of each individual, which also became the background of Lee Je-Ma creating the Sasang Constitutional Medicine at the end of eighteenth century. Sasang Constitutional Medicine classifies humans into four categories and deals with the corresponding pathophysiology of disease as well as its treatment. It is still one of the major pillars of Korean Medicine today.
What is the difference between Korean Medicine and East Asian medicine?
Korean Medicine, traditional Chinese medicine, Japanese Kampo medicine, and traditional Vietnamese medicine are all names of East Asian medicine traditions. Development of printing technology in the tenth century as well as the diversification of international relations led to countries surrounding China-such as Korea, Japan, and Vietnam-to accept the advanced medicine of China at the time. However, by the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, each country was able to establish its own medicine rivaling China with domestic infrastructure and no imported medicines or medical scholars from China. From then, Korea began to influence Japan and China, and Japan also influenced Korea and China, leading to partial distinction of contents and form of medicine in reflection of the distinct characteristics of each country.
Korea was engaged in the specialization of Constitutional Medicine, and Japan was engaged in research for the Treatise on Cold Damage and Miscellaneous Diseases, developing a new prescription technique based on abdominal diagnosis. Such traditional medicine of each country gradually faded as conventional medicine when Western medicine was introduced at the end of nineteenth century. Following twentieth-century modernization, contemporary healthcare systems were created in each country, along with the implementation of medical licensing systems. China’s state-led healthcare system has three types of licenses, consisting of doctor of medicine, doctor of traditional Chinese medicine, and doctor of integrated medicine.
Korea’s healthcare market is maintained by market competition, and it has two types of licenses, consisting of doctor of Korean Medicine and doctor of medicine. Japan does not have a distinct system for traditional medicine within the major system, and therefore is an environment in which some licensed doctors are interested in the traditional medicine as a sub-specialty. Vietnam also has some remaining heritage of East Asian medicine, which is currently fostered by the government. However, the level of infrastructure is extremely low in comparison with that of the other three countries.
In summary, Korean Medicine, traditional Chinese medicine, Japanese Kampo medicine, and traditional Vietnamese medicine are all forms of East Asian medicine that have long been shared and developed within the East Asian culture, and currently coexist with Western medicine in the different healthcare systems. They can be said to be similar in that they share the fundamental theory and treatment techniques. On the contrary, they are different in that each reflects distinct qualities as a result of centuries of nationalization. Moreover, they have settled regionally with the system and culture of each country following the establishment of the modern nation state that heralded Western medicine as the new conventional medicine.
The above article is an excerpt from Korean Medicine: Current Status and Future Prospects, written and published by scholars at the Ministry of Health and Welfare and Pusan National University School of Korean Medicine. We hope that more medical scholars will be able to understand and utilize Korean Medicine after reading this article.
For more information, please refer to Korean Medicine: Current Status and Future Prospects.
https://drive.google.com/open?id=1VueBEgzgqH-y91BL2Xvjq0Fv70zRMUmf
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