TRADITIONAL MEDICINE AS A MODERN INSTITUTION IN EAST ASIAN COUNTRIES

East Asian Traditional Medicine (TM) encompasses all knowledge, techniques and practices that contribute to the prevention, diagnosis and treatment of illnesses, which originated in ancient East Asia. It builds on the three underlying canons of the Yin/Yang, Five Phases and Heaven (Nature) and Human Correspondence, with the Visceral and Bowels System through which Qi and Blood circulate. It practically adopts the three epistemic frames of the temporal sequencing of disease locales from skin to core (Pattern Differentiation of/by Six Channels); the spatial Five-Phase classification of diseases by the Visceral and Bowels System; and the constitutional understanding of innate types of patterned psycho-physiological composition (for example, Sasang Constitutional Medicine). East Asian TM succeeded in what is called a modernization, or the process to professionalize itself as a modernized medical institution that is fitting for a rapidly changing social setting. Compared to other regions, the governments of East Asia have taken various measures such as licensure, statutory accreditation of professional training, R&D and national insurance coverage for TM practices very early on, to incorporate TM into the national health systems. East Asian TM is striving to transform itself into an ‘evidence-based medicine’ by dressing itself with scientific objectivity, while preserving its long-lived values, ideas and practices. Korea’s case shows well a ‘typical modernization process’ of TM in terms of official institutionalization and professionalism, as opposed to the ‘government-pushed’ case of TM in China. Furthermore, TM in the region is reshaping itself to adjust to the new millennium of ‘The Internet of Things’.