Reconstructing Bodies: Biomedicine, Health, and Nation-Building in South Korea since 1945 by John P. DiMoia (review)

Biomedicine and public health have different meanings for different people. With South Korea’s economic success and democratization after the Korean War (1950–53), labor power and infrastructure in biomedicine rapidly grew. In his book, Reconstructing Bodies: Biomedicine, Health, and Nation-Building in South Korea since 1945, author John DiMoia provides snapshots of six different biomedicine stories to evaluate the changing culture of health and disease as a reflection of South Korean nation building since 1945.

In chapter 1, the author outlines Korean health conditions before biomedicine advanced. He argues that at the end of Japanese colonialism (1910–45), biomedicine was limited to some urban centers, and “traditional Korean medicine” (TKM) met most of the health demands of Koreans. The story of the Byun family is introduced to show how practitioners of indigenous medicine struggled to survive the transitions in polities from the Japanese colonial regime to the US Army Military Government In Korea (USAMGIK, 1945–48), and then to the Republic of Korea (ROK or South Korea, 1948 to the present).

Chapter 2 views the case of cholera control in 1946 to examine the role that the USAMGIK played in creating South Korean public health policy. It is not surprising that the USAMGIK replicated the Japanese model to resolve the impending issues of hygiene and epidemic control. DiMoia argues that South Korean public health policy through the late 1960s was heavily shaped by “the legacy of Japanese models of medical pedagogy and public health” (53) mediated through the US notion of crisis and material deficiency.

In chapter 3, the author mainly investigates the “Minnesota Project” (1954–62), which enabled Korean doctors and nurses to study at the University of Minnesota for one or two years. In exchange, US experts, such as Dr. Walt Lillehei (1918–99) and Dr. George Schimert (1918–2000), stayed in Seoul for about one year to introduce the latest techniques in open-heart surgery. Detailing the way personal relationships, individual ambitions, and material conditions were intertwined, DiMoia reveals that the process of “technological transfer” did not occur in a vacuum but depended on selecting appropriate patient groups and securing sufficient supplies of oxygenator parts. The uneven material and social circumstances between two countries limited the Korean emulation of US techniques. Revised from an earlier journal publication, this chapter presents a clear argument with detailed documentation.

Chapter 4 looks at the family planning (FP) campaigns from 1961 to the mid-1970s. Analyzing the distribution of the Lippes loop (1964), the use of transportation (1966), and the consumption of birth control pills (1968), DiMoia describes the Korean eagerness to embrace the idea of birth control. The nominal success of Korean FP primarily stems from its promotion by the ROK. The gradual strengthening of Park Chung-hee’s regime positioned the family planning campaign to be a significant part of the rural rehabilitation movement, the saemaŭl undong.

Chapter 5 focuses on the antiparasite campaigns carried out between 1969 and 1995. As the author points out, every young Korean student during this period had to submit a stool sample for a public survey. Sponsored by the Park Chung-hee regime, this campaign exemplifies another technique that the state adopted in public schools to target public health. DiMoia argues that the language and logistics of antiparasite campaigns emulated the model of more traditional campaigns to eliminate mice, rats, and worms during 1954–69. The difference between the old and new framework lay in a new research community through which a new generation of Korean parasitologists came to distinctively define their professional identity.

In chapter 6, the author aims to trace the multiple origins of the South Korean practice of blepharoplasty. The knowledge and technique of double-eyelid surgery was shaped through information from the Meiji era of Japan (1868–1912) and nurtured by US plastic surgeons like Dr. David Ralph Millard (1919–2011), who viewed operations that repaired damage on Korean faces...