Authors
Youngju Lee
Published in
Ui sahak. Volume 35. Issue 2. Pages 469-501.
Abstract
This article examines the historical process through which pharmacists, organized through the Korean Pharmaceutical Association, sought to establish their professional status and social roles within South Korea's changing healthcare system from the 1950s through the 1970s. Drawing on the concept of the "professional project," it analyzes a series of collective efforts through which pharmacists sought to secure their jurisdiction in the pharmaceutical market while legitimizing their professional status by demonstrating their expertise and social necessity amid competition with various healthcare actors over roles and professional boundaries. The article focuses on three cases in which this process was particularly pronounced. First, in responding to druggists' demands for the right to subdivide medicines for retail sale and patent medicine sellers' demands for elevation to druggist status in the 1950s and 1960s, the Korean Pharmaceutical Association defended pharmacists' market jurisdiction over the handling of medicines and intervened collectively in the legislative process. Second, from the late 1960s onward, through efforts to enact the School Health Act, implement the school pharmacist system, and conduct pollution surveys, the Association applied hygienic knowledge and techniques accumulated within the field of pharmacy to the emerging problem of environmental pollution and presented school health and environmental hygiene as new areas of professional activity for pharmacists. Third, as vacancies in public health center directorships in rural areas became increasingly severe in the 1970s, the Association called for expanding eligibility for these positions to multiple professions and argued that pharmacists, too, were qualified to oversee local health administration. Although these efforts did not all result in stable institutionalization, the Association identified gaps in the contemporary healthcare system as opportunities for new professional activities, linked them to pharmacists' professional roles, and accumulated experience in responding collectively to other professions and the state. By tracing these processes, this article shows that pharmacists did not merely perform roles assigned to them but actively sought to shape their own professional standing and roles amid social and institutional change. More broadly, through the activities of pharmacists, it demonstrates that South Korea's healthcare system in the 1950s-1970s constituted a pluralistic arena in which diverse actors competed over roles and jurisdictions and sought to claim new spheres of activity.
PMID:
42823806
Bibliographic data and abstract were imported from PubMed on 02 Oct 2026.
Read full publication at:
Please sign in
to see all details.
Advertisement
Stats
- Recommendations n/a n/a positive of 0 vote(s)
- Views 2
- Comments 0