John P. DiMoia

South Korea represents one of the world's most enthusiastic markets for plastic surgery. The growth of this market is particularly fascinating as access to medical care and surgery arose only recently with economic growth since the 1980s. Reconstructing Bodies traces the development of a medical infrastructure in the Republic of Korea (ROK) from 1945 to the present, arguing that the plastic surgery craze and the related development of biotech ambitions is deeply rooted in historical experience.

The Atoms for Peace program has typically been read as primarily a project of American Cold War ideology, supplying very little in the way of substantive materials and training to participating partner nations. This article challenges this position by bringing in the additional perspective of the recipient as an actor, in this case South Korea during the early stages of its post–Korean War reconstruction (1953– ). As Atoms for Peace arrived in Seoul in the late 1950s, a complex set of actors—on

This book surveys the transformation of medical practice in Korea from the late 19th century to the present, detailing the numerous changes involved as late Choson Korea (1876-1910) gave way to Japanese colonization (1910-1945), the post-war American Occupation (1945-1948), and an independent Republic of Korea (ROK) (1948- ), with the Korean War soon to come. Moreover, the book focuses on the corresponding history of medical intervention—sanitary, surgical, and preventive public health—by a wide

This article interrogates the category “Cold War family planning” for the East Asian context (1945–1991), arguing that the category remains highly relevant while also reflecting a much longer regional history of demography and population studies. In this sense, the category is both useful and insufficient, especially if we fail to examine a revised periodization and a constructed nature for the category. If the category as constructed has its origins in a highly charged, ideological binary follo

Although South Korea's response to COVID-19 has received international praise, the nation's public health policy raises numerous privacy concerns, with a growing number of civil society groups joining the conversation. Following changes to public health law in 2015 in response to the MERS (Middle Eastern Respiratory Syndrome) crisis, South Korea's KCDC (Center for Disease Control) reconfigured its enforcement practice with measures tied to the movements of infected patients. New laws allow for t

This paper looks at the formation of a South Korean national health network by focusing on the introduction of an ambitious National Family Planning (FP) Program under President Park Chung Hee (1961–1968). The program, influenced in part by the model of its neighbor, Taiwan (Taichung), saw two pilot studies carried out in Koyang (rural, beginning in 1963) and Sundong-gu (Seoul metropolitan area, 1964–1966), before being carried to rural areas nationwide. If the program began with numerous echoes

10.1007/s12280-008-9054-5

In standard accounts of the origins of the ISO (International Organization for Standardization), or intermodal, shipping container, including Marc Levinson’s The Box and Alexander Klose’s The Container Principle, the story remains centered in Europe and North America, reflecting the issue emerging on the continent in the prewar era, and the post-war growth of the American trucking industry, associated with the expansion of federal highways. In contrast, this essay moves the focus to East and Sou

From Minnesota to Seoul? The DeWall Helix Bubble Oxygenator and Technology Transfer in Open-Heart Surgery, 1955–1965 John P. DiMoia (bio) In his inaugural speech of January 20, 1949, an address that has since been recognized as the origin of the Point Four program, U.S. president Harry Truman mobilized the material wealth of the American nation as part of an ambitious platform designed to share this bounty with the developing world. Specifically, he outlined his ideological differences with resp

East Asian Science, Technology and Society: an International Journal - Volume 11, Number 4, December 2017

If Singapore has rapidly become known internationally for its work in recruiting large numbers of elite foreign scientists—or ‘foreign talent’ (FT) in Singapore’s terms—there remains much to learn about the state’s current biotech programme through prior work conducted at National University Hospital (NUH), recognising that recent ambitions derive in part from a much more modest set of origins. Specifically, Dr Ariff Bongso’s career mirrors this same series of incremental transitions, as he woul

This article interrogates the role of Korean military and civilian medicine during the Vietnam War (1965-1973), investigating its links to the period of reconstruction (1954-1960) following the Korean War, along with implications for the domestic population in the late 1960s and following. As early as the mid-1950s, civil society organizations were making contributions to aid other Asian nations, creating an Asian-Asian style of partnership often missing from the literature. Even as postwar Sout