Taking into Account the History of Korean Graduate Medical Education

졸업 후 의학교육제도의 역사성 고찰

During the Japanese colonial period in the Korean Peninsula, Chosun (ethnic Korean) physicians were trained in vocational clinical schools, but Japanese physicians in medical school. Therefore, the Japanese government treated the Japanese physicians as medical doctors but Chosun physicians as dealers or traders in clinical services. This colonial discriminatory policy became a habitual concept to Korean physicians. Because of these traditional concepts regarding physicians, after the colonial period, the newly established Korean government also had the same concept of physicians. Therefore, in 1952, the Korean graduate medical education system was launched under a government clearance system with the claim of supporting medical specialties as clinical dealers or clinical businesspeople. During the last 60 years, this inappropriate customary concept and the unsuitable system have evolved into medical residency training education, and then into graduate medical education. Today graduate medical education has become inextricably linked to postdoctoral work in Korean hospitals.