Thesis ID: CBB001567652

In Sickness and in Health: Americans and Psychiatry in Korea, 1950--1962 (2014)

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Yum, Jennifer (Author)


Eckert, Carter
Harrington, Anne
Harvard University
Harrington, Anne
Gordon, Andrew
Gordon, Andrew


Publication Date: 2014
Edition Details: Advisor: Eckert, Carter; Committee Members: Harrington, Anne, Gordon, Andrew.
Physical Details: 233 pp.
Language: English

This dissertation begins with a simple set of questions: how and why did the Western discipline of psychiatry gain traction in the Republic of Korea? My answers point to the Korean War and the US-ROK alliance as the two most important factors enabling this phenomenon. The number of psychiatrists in Korea hovered below a dozen on the eve of the Korean War. The mental health crisis on the peninsula reached a new level of urgency with the outbreak of war as psychiatric casualties mounted in the ROK Army. Confronting the problem of mental breakdown among soldiers for the first time, Korean medical corps officers sought the help of psychiatrists in the Eighth US Army. This cross-cultural partnership revolutionized psychiatry's trajectory in Korea in two ways. First, training by the US military psychiatry program yielded a new generation of Korean psychiatrists who would play a pivotal role in steering the discipline for next several decades. Second, psychiatry was Americanized institutionally and culturally by the wartime encounter. Tracing psychiatry's evolution from its birth in wartime to its heyday in the immediate postwar years, the dissertation shows how American contributions laid the groundwork for several landmark achievements for the field. At the same time, it highlights the role of Koreans whose contributions were critical in carrying out these developments. Primary sources used for this study include official records from the National Archives of the United States and South Korea, mental hospital records, newspaper accounts, interviews, and materials maintained in private collections of South Korea's first psychiatrists. This dissertation serves as the first systematic study of psychiatry in Korea. More broadly, it stretches the historiographical contours of two of the most important topics for understanding the history of contemporary Korea: the Korean War and the US-ROK relationship.

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Description Cited in Dissertation Abstracts International-A 75/10(E), Apr 2015. Proquest Document ID: 1557747509.


Citation URI
https://data.isiscb.org/isis/citation/CBB001567652/

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Authors & Contributors
James Flowers
Hu, Qing
Ji-yeon Im
Fan, Tingwei
Liu, Ming
Fitzpatrick, K. Meghan
Concepts
Medicine and the military; medicine in war
Cross-cultural interaction; cultural influence
Psychiatry
Medicine
Mental disorders and diseases
War neuroses
Time Periods
20th century
19th century
20th century, late
21st century
18th century
17th century
Places
Korea
China
United States
Europe
Taiwan
Commonwealth countries
Institutions
United States. Army
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