Uisahak (Apr 2021)
The study on the first women doctors in Korea, AHN Soo-kyung, KIM Young-heung, and KIM Hae-ji
Abstract
This study examined three women, AHN Soo-kyung, KIM Youngheung and KIM Hae-ji, who were officially licensed as doctors for the first time in Joseon. I wanted to find a new “starting point” of women’s medicine history by scrutinizing their home environment, medical classes, graduation and medical license, and life after becoming doctors. The parents of KIM Young-heung and KIM Hae-ji might have been enlightened and Christians. AHN Soo-kyung did not have a Christian family. Her father, AHN Wang-geo, who was both an educator and a poet, was aware of the need for women’s education or modern education. Female medical missionaries such as Rosetta S. Hall and Mary Cutler also worked hard to get them admitted to the medical class. They went to school with a female guardian and a brother and adapted to school life safely. After graduating from Kyongsung Medical College they obtained doctors’ licenses and continued their medical activities at the hospital. KIM Young-heung actively engaged in social activities as a female intellectual by giving public lectures. She worked as a doctor in Kyongsung, Pyongyang, and Incheon. KIM Hae-ji did medical work and got married in Pyongyang. However, she had a hard time due to her husband’s death and a medical accident. In the end, she seems to have left the medical field by returning her medical license. AHN Soo-kyung had been working at Dongdaemun (East Gate) Women’s Hospital for more than 20 years and was willing to participate in what she could do as a woman, doctor and intellectual. Therefore, she established a free maternity clinic in the hospital. She defended Joseon’s students and hospitals in protest of the controversy of nursing school and the move to abolish Dongdaemun Women’s Hospital. She quietly participated in the Dong-Ah Women’s Association and 6.10 the Independence Movement by doing anything she could do to help. She had a shy personality, but she faithfully fulfilled her duty as a doctor with a strong professional sense that saving people was her calling.
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