Medical Support Provided by the UN’s Scandinavian Allies during the Korean War

Abstract

The humanitarian motivation of medical support from the three Scandinavian countries during the Korean War cannot be doubted, but the countries also had to be politically sensitive during this period. The fact that these countries only dispatched medical support, and that the team was not only for military purpose but also intended to help the civilians is a different point from the U.S. military medical support, which distinguished military medical support that is the U.S. Eighth Army, from the civilian treatment and relief, which is the UNCACK. In addition, medical support activities from the Scandinavian countries were bound to be flexible depending on the rapidly changing trend of war, active regions, and their support methods. At a time when the battle was fierce and the number of wounded soldiers increased, they had no choice but to concentrate on treating wounded soldiers, whether in Busan or Incheon. However, even while treating these wounded soldiers, they tried to treat and rescue civilians around the base area whenever they had chance. It is easily imaginable that in the urgent situation of war, the nature of medical support cannot be clearly divided into military or civilian if there is only one team that is operating. It is clear, however, that the common humanitarian purpose of rescuing and treating civilians affected the establishment of the National Medical Center in Seoul after the war. The Scandinavians had indeed remained even after the end of the war in to provide full support of establishing modern medical system in Korea. This suggests that modern Korean medical or public health system did not start to be developed in the 1960s like some researchers argue, but started a few years earlier during the time of the war with the support from the countries world-wide.