Who Are the Doctors of Korean Medicine? Exploring the Identity of a Medical Profession

Abstract:This paper explores the characteristics of the professional identity of the Doctors of Korean Medicine (KMD), a medical profession in South Korea practicing traditional East Asian medicine. They play a primary care role in healthcare, notwithstanding the legally limited purview of their clinical and public health roles. This mainstream position came their way through biomedicalization that occurred in the profession in the context of the country's private sector-led health system. Based on data gathered among KMDs and in state-level policymaking scenes as an insider, this paper aims to illustrate the characteristics of KMDs' identity by attending to multiple levels of their presence as modern medical profession. In doing so, it draws on works that explored medical identity, Simon Sinclair's (1997) Making Doctors: An Institutional Apprenticeship in particular, to show that despite their similarities to biomedical practitioners, KMDs exhibit discriminating characteristics in their professional consciousness.