식민지기 윤일선의 일본 유학과 의학 연구

Abstract

In this article, I looked at the life of Yun Il-sun, a representative medical scientist of modern Korea, and examined the following problems. First, I took note of the position of the Korean people in the academic system of the Japanese colonial empire and restored the life of Yun Il-sun as specifically as possible. Yun was educated among Japanese people from elementary school to university. Although he received the best education at Old System High School and Imperial University and grew to be a prominent medical scientist, he could not overcome his identity as a colonized person. Yun Il-sun, who moved from Keijo Imperial University to Severance Union Medical College, would become involved in the activities of founding of the Korean Medical Association and publishing the Korean Medical Journal. Second, I deliberated the meaning of ‘culture’ to the intellectuals in the periphery. Old System High School and Imperial University where Yun Il-sun was educated were the hotbed of ‘culturalism.’ Yun’s college days were the heyday of Taisho Democracy, and his fellow students were attracted to Marxism, Christian poverty movement, Buddhist cultivation movement and so on. Yun sought to overcome the ideological concerns of young people through the acquisition of ‘culture.’ The ‘culture’ emphasized by Yun had an enlightenment characteristic that emphasized education, but it also functioned as an ‘identity culture of educated elites.’ Third, I used the concept of ‘colonial academism’ and examined the aspects and characteristics of the colonial-periphery academic field, focusing on medicine. Yun Il-sun was a Korean professor at the Keijo Imperial University. He founded an academic society and published an academic journal for Koreans. He attempted to reproduce scholarship by advising doctoral dissertations of his students. At the same time, several facts show that he was also in the affected area of ‘colonial academism’: the fact that he was kicked out of the Keijo Imperial University, the fact that the Korean Medical Association and the Korean Medical Journal were banned by the Governor General, the fact that his students asked for doctoral degrees from Kyoto Imperial University where he studied. Yun Il-sun crossed the limits of ‘colonial academism’ and acted as the agent of empire. This was made possible by the characteristics of the academic discipline of medicine, the environment of the Severance Union Medical College, and his personal traits of superior ability and indifference to politics. I examined the postcolonial evolution of the ‘colonial academism’ and‘culturalism.’ The mix of continuity and discontinuity from ‘colonial academism’ and the hybrid of Japanese academism and American academism, are culminated in the Korean characteristics of ‘postcolonial academism.’ Yun tried to harmonize the practice-oriented American academism with the theory-oriented Japanese academism and maintain the purity of academism while doing so. This effort was revealed as an emphasis on basic medicine and natural sciences. As his efforts combined with culturalism and his indifference to politics, he was recognized as the symbol of ivory tower and academism.