Suturing the Nation in South Korean Historical Television Medical Dramas

摘要

Using the 2000-2010 South Korean historical medical dramas Heo Jun (The Way of Medicine), Dae Jang Geum (Jewel in the Palace), and Jejoongwon (The Hospital) as case studies, this article examines televisual reimaginations of Korean medical modernity as (re)interpretative popular culture texts. Particularly in the areas of the anatomical sciences and surgery, modern medicine's emancipatory potentials in these productions are set semi-fictitiously in pre-modern Joseon historical contexts. Dramaturgically challenging entrenched social hierarchies and ossified cultural taboos of Institutionalized Confucianism, these dramas' progressive physician-protagonists emphasize the universality and impartiality of medical knowledge in what is herein termed as Generative Confucianism.