Colonial Drivers in the Formation of the Patent Medicine Industry

In Korea and Japan (and indeed globally), the presence of small-scale itinerant merchants was a constant feature of the commercial landscape at least since the early modern period.^{Footnote 44} In Korea, pobusang (褓負商), organized, guild-style, full-time traveling traders, played significant roles in regional markets and even started to create a nationwide organization in the mid-nineteenth century.^{Footnote 45} In Japan, drug peddlers based in the Toyama region constituted an important part of the medicinal culture in the premodern and modern periods by pioneering the “use first and pay later” system of drug replenishment, mostly catering to the demands of rural residents who otherwise would not have regular access to medicinal products.^{Footnote 46} In a typical Toyama system, a peddler visited a household and provided a box of household medicine, often with promotional gift items to children such as rectangular paper balloons. About half a year later, the same peddler returned to the household, received payment for the already consumed medicine, and restocked the used items. With a single peddler covering almost 1,500 households, this system was by no means trouble-free. The vehement opposition to patent medicine, as waged by Fukuzawa Yukichi in the 1880s, was as much against its marketing practices as it was against dubious ingredients.^{Footnote 47} But, while never perfect, the Toyama system guaranteed a certain level of consistency in terms of the quality of both its peddlers and the drugs they provided. As reported in the British Medical Journal in 1908, “The patent medicine dealers [of Toyama] had drawn up regulations among themselves” and even had “a school for instruction in medical matters connected with patent medicines with nearly 200 pupils.”^{Footnote 48} The situation in colonial Korea was different. The expansion of Japanese rule to the Korean peninsula (in the form of a protectorate from 1905 and then as a formal colony from 1910) precipitated the demise of both traditional Korean pobusang and Toyama-style peddlers, clearing the way for the emergence of a virtually unregulated horde of peddlers as the primary human intermediaries for the patent medicine industry in colonial Korea.

From the early years of Japanese colonial rule, the pobusang organization was severely diminished, mostly due to its earlier connection to the now disgraced Korean court.^{Footnote 49} Throughout the nineteenth century, the pobusang organization expanded its significance as a commercial interest group in close cooperation with the Korean court; the pobusangs were guaranteed certain tax exemptions and privileged access to markets in exchange for willing participation in governmental tax collection and occasional military campaigns and surveillance using their dense nationwide organization. The participation of pobusang members in the violent suppression of rebellious peasants during the 1894 Tonghak Rebellion, a quasi-religious, antiforeign, and anti-Western grassroots movement, is a clear example in this regard. However, the onset of Japanese colonial rule from 1910 changed the business environment for the pobusang. The presence of a privileged nationwide organization that occasionally fulfilled military functions certainly posed a significant threat, both to Japanese merchants who clamored for “equal” competition in the colonial market and to the Japanese colonial administration who abhorred the idea of a quasi-military group that could be mobilized at a moment’s notice. As a result, through a number of legal codifications in the 1910s, the pobusang organization started its downward spiral to de facto disintegration.

While the pobusang organization started to lose its grip over the Korean market, Toyama peddlers attempted to bring their expertise to Korea, mostly targeting Japanese expatriates, whose number grew from 15,829 in 1900 to 171,543 in 1910.^{Footnote 50} But, as Waida, himself a Toyama merchant with nineteen years of experience in the Korean market and owner of the drugstore Waida Yakuho (薈田薬舗) in Keijō (now Seoul), explained in 1914, the Toyama style of drug distribution did not work in Korea for three interrelated reasons.^{Footnote 51} First, the constant movement and relocation of the early Japanese settlers in this newly acquired territory ran counter to the Toyama business model, which was predicated upon the presence of stable settlements. Second, unlike Japan, where Toyama merchants delivered drugs at the manufacturers’ suggested retail prices, a (mostly Korean) practice of giving a 20 percent discount undermined the bottom line of Toyama peddlers. Finally, Korean consumers’ preference for medicinal products manufactured by Korean makers (due to their initial suspicion of the content of Japanese medicine) led them to choose Korean peddlers over Toyama peddlers.^{Footnote 52} Although it was an isolated incident, the murder of a Korean peddler of Japanese medicine in 1883 by an angry mob on account of the rumor that he was hired by the Japanese to poison Koreans^{Footnote 53} suggests that Waida’s observation was not mere conjecture.

The vacuum in the marketplace created by the decline of the Korean pobusang organization and the Japanese Toyama merchants was then filled by transient drug peddlers called oichini (オイチニ). The origin of the oichini is often attributed to the closing years of the Russo-Japanese War of 1904–1905, when many soldiers returning from the battlefields took up the job of temporary drug peddler as a way to get by. The Boston Medical and Surgical Journal of 1911 gives a detailed account of this Japanese version of “medicine fakirs” that took advantage of “human gullibility in the desire for relief from disease.”^{Footnote 54} Often “a musician with a tuneful accordion,” this type of peddler was named for “the expression, ‘oichini,’ or one [ichi in Japanese], two [ni], keeping step to the music of an accordion.” To become an oichini, one only needed to pay 5 yen as a deposit to a merchant. In return, this “traveling apothecary” received 7 yen worth of medicine and a uniform that included “a cap, a suit of clothes and a pair of shoes” decorated with “red and white epaulettes.” After assembling at the master’s house in the morning, all the peddlers then set out across the more than 800 streets of Tokyo by eight o’clock.

The oichinis’ cheerful music and eye-catching outfit were not limited to the streets of Tokyo. As Japan’s victory in the Russo-Japanese War turned Korea into the protectorate of Japan, oichinis made their way into Korea, peddling Japanese patent medicine such as Jintan to Korean consumers.^{Footnote 55} In particular, the grant of a special exemption in 1905 in the case of exported patent medicine from the 10 percent stamp tax on patent medicine introduced in 1882 incentivized Japanese merchants to explore export markets.^{Footnote 56} In addition, the subsequent formal annexation of Korea in 1910 lured yet more adventurous Japanese of limited economic means to the job of peddling patent medicine, with self-help books like the 1910 How to Succeed in Korea: A Small Investment of 100 Yen confidently recommending selling patent medicine as a lucrative occupation that not only would provide a decent life for a family of three but would also earn one the respect of Koreans as a supplier of much-needed medicinal products.^{Footnote 57}

As oichini-style peddlers started to expand their reach within the Korean medicinal market, reform efforts implemented in the last years of Korean independence and the introduction of a new economic order under Japanese rule worked in tandem to create a new generation of indigenous peddlers in colonial Korea. According to historian Chun Woo-Yong, three factors were critical in the explosion of the number of peddlers in the first decades of the twentieth century.^{Footnote 58} First, the abolition of slavery and hereditary status in 1894 through the Kabo Reform and the dismissal of former Korean soldiers through the onset of formal colonization were critical to the supply of peddlers, as newly manumitted servants became urban poor whose limited job prospects forced them to the desperate job of peddling. The abolition of the status system was significant as well, because former slaveholders who had relied upon domestic servants for everyday shopping now urgently needed substitutes. Indeed, in a social circumstance in which female members of the former ruling yangban class were dissuaded from going out shopping by themselves well into the late 1910s, peddlers were often the only commercial outlet available for homebound Korean women.^{Footnote 59} Second, the physical transformation of urban space—the addition of movie theaters and amusement parks, along with the construction of ever-important train stations—provided new commercial venues for the army of itinerant peddlers by attracting locals to these new urban fixtures. Finally, the introduction of foreign goods such as soaps, toothpaste, and other “exotic” items, mostly through Japanese wholesalers, created new demands and accompanying commercial potential for emergent peddlers, who played a pivotal role in the sales and distribution of urban essentials such as firewood, potable water, and other everyday necessities, including patent medicine.^{Footnote 60}

Choi, a protagonist in the 1933 novella “Nakcho [Sunset]” by Pak T’ae-wŏn (1909–1986), is a literary embodiment of what Chun characterizes as the main features of emergent urban peddlers in colonial Korea.^{Footnote 61} Born in 1870, the sixty-four-year-old Choi peddled patent medicine for almost thirty years, roaming around the newly created urban environment of the colonial capital. But Choi was not born a peddler forced to walk fifteen kilometers every day for the measly sale of one and a half wŏn worth of patent medicine. Rather, he was a veritable elite of late imperial Korea, duly selected in 1895 as one of the one hundred students sent to Tokyo to study with a governmental scholarship. His glorious days in Japan, however, did not last long. In the wake of the assassination of the Korean Queen Min by a group of Japanese gangsters in 1895, the Korean government promptly recalled all Korean students. The subsequent career of Choi was a freefall, paralleling the fate of his own country. His gradual progression from a menial officer at the Bureau of Police Affairs to a prison guard, and from a fee collector of a private marketplace to a decrepit patent medicine peddler, is at once symbolic and symptomatic of the economic imperatives of colonial rule as it was consolidated in Korea.

While colonial rule plunged Choi to the precarious position of urban underclass, the incorporation of Korea into Japan’s empire provided a significant economic boost to Japanese pioneers in Korea.^{Footnote 62} For instance, during the Russo-Japanese War, procurement orders for the Japanese naval fleets in Inch’ŏn, Korea’s treaty port, helped Japanese merchant Arai Kotarō of the future Arai Yakubō transform his business from a petty provider of toothpaste and soap to one of the largest distributors of patent medicine and medicinal products in colonial Korea.^{Footnote 63} Similarly, the colonial government’s procurement for public hospitals and public institutions fostered the rapid success of Japanese merchants. Starting with the conversion of the former royal Taehan Hospital into the Government-General Hospital in 1910, the Japanese Government-General of colonial Korea installed public Jikei Hospitals in major provinces throughout the Korean peninsula—expanding from thirteen in 1910, to forty-one by 1937, and eventually, forty-six in 1942.^{Footnote 64} These public hospitals were a showcase where the colonial government could display its medical prowess and, by extension, the power of the empire, and the right to supply drugs and other medicinal products and equipment was naturally restricted to Japanese merchants who had strong (and often exclusive) ties to manufacturers back in Japan.^{Footnote 65} For instance, Yamagishi Yūtarō supplied the initial installation of medical supplies and equipment to Jikei Hospitals when they were first established in the provinces; it also supplied first aid kits for every post office throughout the country.^{Footnote 66} The governmental procurement order was an unexpected boon for retail sales as well, for patients and consumers interpreted the government contract as a guarantee of quality.^{Footnote 67}

The success of Japanese merchants of patent medicine in turn inspired local merchants of medicinal herbs to dip their toes in the lucrative business of patent medicine in the 1900s and 1910s. And the transition could not have been easier.^{Footnote 68} According to historian Park Yunjae, the most prevalent form of creating a “new” patent medicine by these former merchants of herbal medicine in Korea was to add new “Western” ingredients to the existing herbal medicinal concoction,^{Footnote 69} a practice that was not much different in Japan. As such, many first movers had expertise either in Korean herbal medicine (i.e., Tonghwa yakpang [同和藥房] or Ch’ŏnil yakpang) or in the sales of medicinal herbs (i.e., Chosŏn maeyak).^{Footnote 70} Certainly not all Korean merchants of patent medicine got a head start in the business of medicinal commodities, however. Yi Gyŏngbong, one of the most successful Korean entrepreneurs of patent medicine in colonial Korea, started as an oichini-style peddler, who wore a Western suit with a leather bag full of his own Jintan knock-off Ch’ŏngshimbomyŏngdan on a train from Inch’ŏn to Keijō, projecting the same flamboyant air of novelty that Japanese oichinis exemplified.^{Footnote 71} His success and that of other Koreans was in part due to the division of the colonial marketplace along national lines. In a 1914 market report of the patent medicine industry in Korea compiled by the Federation of Patent Medicine Cooperatives of Shiga Prefecture in Japan, Daikoku Torimatsu, the owner of the very first Japanese drugstore in Pusan, established in 1900,^{Footnote 72} confided that Koreans accounted for only 20 percent of sales of imported patent medicine from Japan with the exception of tonics (清涼剤), for which Korean purchases represented 40 percent of sales in 1914.^{Footnote 73} Daikoku reasoned that this surprisingly low figure primarily reflected distrust of imported Japanese medicine that was initially supplied by fraudulent fly-by-night merchants before the annexation. As such, Koreans preferred, if at all possible, drugs manufactured by Koreans who better catered to their preferred form of consumption, decoction.^{Footnote 74} For this reason, Yi Ŭngsŏn, a Korean owner of the drugstore Hwap’yŏndang, enjoyed absolute trust from Koreans, while Chesaengdang, the top Korean merchant of patent medicine, had thirty-two branches and many peddlers covering the entire Korean peninsula.^{Footnote 75}

As the colonial era progressed, the suspicion of Japanese patent medicine quickly dissipated, giving way to a stupendous rise in popularity of a number of notable drugs from Japan, such as mouth refresher Kaol [カオール], Jintan, the eye drop Rōto Megusuri (ロート目薬), and Chūjōtō (中将湯), a popular medicine for “female troubles.”^{Footnote 76} The increasing domination of Japanese patent medicine in the Korean market, however, did not necessarily mean the gradual exclusion of Korean merchants. Both Korean merchants and their Japanese counterparts recognized that they were partners in the booming medicinal marketplace; as Arai Kotarō, the Japanese magnate in the patent medicine industry noted in 1914, Korean wholesalers and retailers did not just compete with Japanese merchants, but were also their clients in the vertical hierarchy of the medicinal market.^{Footnote 77} In this regard, their relations in colonial Korea were symbiotic, rather than exclusionary, each occupying a unique place in a distribution channel of medicinal commodities.^{Footnote 78} At the bottom of this chain were peddlers and small-scale retailers, which became the physical faces of patent medicine to consumers in colonial Korea.

Foot Soldiers of the Patent Medicine Industry: Practices and Malpractices

For the newly emergent group of urban poor in colonial Korea who had neither skill nor much capital, peddling patent medicine was one of the easiest options, because it required no particular qualifications. According to the regulations promulgated in 1912, peddlers were required to register with local police stations and acquire permits for sales, but it was a nominal prerequisite that was often ignored or taken care of by manufacturers who completed the paperwork on behalf of applicants. A 1913 recruiting advertisement for the drugstore Hwap’yŏndang reveals unmistakable similarities between Korean peddlers and oichinis in Japan.^{Footnote 79} According to this call for application for 3,500 patent medicine peddlers to cover all 329 counties in the country, a peddler could “earn enough to manage his household” by selling Hwap’yŏndang’s popular digestive pill, P’albodan (八寶丹). Absolutely no training or expertise was required as long as one was between fifteen and forty years old, of a good conduct, and willing to pay a required deposit between 5 and 10 wŏn, which in turn gave the peddler access to more than sixty patent medicines at 50 percent off the suggested retail price.

The allure of earning a sufficient amount of money with little effort was without a doubt irresistible to many Koreans, attracting even unsuspecting students and their teachers. On June 13 and 25, 1924, the newspaper Shidae ilbo reported an effort by students and teachers of the Tongmyŏng Hagwŏn in Hwanghae Province.^{Footnote 80} According to the reports, Tongmyŏng Hagwŏn wished to expand the school’s facilities, but at the cost of 10,000 wŏn, the expansion seemed practically impossible. Teachers and students resolved to raise this substantial amount of money by working as peddlers of patent medicine. To their delight, they were able to purchase 20,000 pouches of the digestive pill Ryŏngshinhwan (寧神丸) from the drugstore Kyŏngsŏng maeyak sanghoe at production cost. As Shidae ilbo reported, “If only 20,000 out of 17 million compatriots each purchase this drug that costs 1 wŏn, they will easily complete their mission.”^{Footnote 81} There is no follow-up report about the result of this seemingly naïve and overly optimistic capital campaign, but it is at least clear from contemporary newspapers that they were not the only educators keen on using the practice of drug peddling as a moneymaking scheme. For instance, although at a much smaller scale, in November 1925, Kim Ch’ango, a school overseer of Sŏsŏn Haksul Gangsŭpso in Yonggang County, decided to peddle patent drugs to earn maintenance costs for the school.^{Footnote 82} Likewise, Yang Jimun and Pyŏn Insŏng, two teachers from the private school Pogwang Hakkyo in Taedong County, started peddling drugs in March 1927 to raise money for their school.^{Footnote 83}

On the other side of the table, drug manufacturers and wholesalers had every reason to enjoy this explosive growth in the number of peddlers and small retailers. For one, peddlers functioned as sensitive tentacles stretched out into the market, constantly checking its pulse. The practice of settling accounts every day or at maximum every two or three days created an almost instantaneous feedback loop of what worked and what did not work in the market. Information such as “Korean women do not take a pill with iron in it, because iron will turn the color of stool black, which is an ominous sign for them”^{Footnote 84} and “Koreans pay higher prices for patent medicine if the wrapping is written in English because they think it is an imported product”^{Footnote 85} must have been secured from and confirmed by peddlers. In addition, financially speaking, manufacturers and wholesalers had nothing to lose by hiring as many peddlers as possible, because they did not have to spend any money in training these salespeople. Unlike the Singer sewing machine company, which pioneered the “science of selling” by training salesmen “in the protocols of comportment and dress … lessons in communication and psychology,”^{Footnote 86} manufacturers and wholesalers of patent medicine regarded their peddlers as disposable.^{Footnote 87} Indeed, by definition, these peddlers were independent contractors whose salaries were based almost entirely on their own sales. As such, if they did not make enough money, they were easily dismissed. For instance, the drugstore Hwap’yŏndang had a regulation that stipulated that peddlers would be evaluated each month based on their sales performances. In cases of unsatisfactory results, peddlers would simply lose their positions with their deposit of 5 wŏn returned to them.^{Footnote 88} For the high achievers, however, manufacturers and wholesalers did not spare any expense in wining and dining them. For instance, Ch’ŏnil yakpang, the number one Korean manufacturer of patent medicine in the 1930s, invited high-rolling regional retailers to a complimentary tour of Mount Diamond and held many entertainments, including a dance exhibition of the then-celebrity Choe Seung-hui. Ch’ŏnil yakpang even hosted a five-minute plane ride event to further energize its sales network.^{Footnote 89}

Yet succeeding as a peddler was by no means an easy feat. In his 1914 guidebook written for Japanese who were keen to relocate to Korea, To Those Who Are Bound for Korea, Uga Ramon warns that, among all businesses, peddling medicine is the most difficult one, for a peddler has no other option but to sell a product that no one has promised to purchase to someone of whom he or she has no knowledge.^{Footnote 90} According to Uga, who discussed a wide range of employment options for prospective migrants to Korea, selling patent medicine either as a retailer or as a peddler was not the best choice, although the industry still had space for new entrants, and someone who managed to acquire a small storefront could make no less than 50 wŏn per month. His hesitation stemmed from two factors. For one thing, given that selling patent medicine was a high-margin business, there was increasing competition on all fronts. As a result, most peddlers could average only around 0.40 or 0.50 wŏn per day, hardly a decent salary, given that even an unskilled Korean laborer could expect to make 0.81 wŏn per day in 1928.^{Footnote 91} But for another (and more significantly), selling patent medicine required much more than knowledge or experience; success often depended upon physique, manners, and personal appearance, which one could not easily control or change.

Iwasaki Sodō, a self-claimed counsel to the moneyless unemployed in Japan, concurred that there was much to learn to be successful in the job of peddling patent medicine. In his 1913 guidebook, Advisor to Unemployed and Have-nots, Iwasaki gave detailed information on fifty-four occupations that range from telephone operator to police officer in colonial Korea.^{Footnote 92} According to Iwasaki, being a successful peddler of patent medicine involved much more than simply paying 10 yen as a deposit for renting a Western suit, hat, and leather carrier and for the initial stock of medicine, as ubiquitous calls for applications for peddlers insinuated. Before one hit the road, a prospective peddler needed to memorize the names and efficacies of all of the medicines, which took several days. Then, one was accompanied by a more experienced peddler who led a three- to four-day field exercise. Now, one could finally go out alone, but this was not the end. Iwasaki noted that a peddler needed to continue to practice interpersonal skills and sales tactics; for instance, he might want to test several jokes on his wife or daughter or have tea or lunch with repeat customers to build relationships. Once he was welcome to stay overnight at a customer’s place for free during unexpected rain, then he could be deemed to have sufficient skill.

Overall, the job of peddler was an exploitative mechanism that preyed upon the desperation and gullibility of urban poor in colonial Korea, primarily benefiting big patent medicine merchants. Yet it did not take long for these merchants to recognize that their “foot soldiers” of marketing were a classic example of a double-edged sword. The proliferation of unqualified peddlers and retailers whose sole purpose was to make quick money naturally entailed fraud and deception, and the constant stream of undesirable accidents started to taint the reputation of the industry as a whole. Newspapers in the 1910s and 1920s were full of articles furiously reporting every imaginable practice of deception, fraud, and extortion by peddlers and retailers of patent medicine, resembling the heyday of snake oil sellers and hucksters in the United States in the second half of the nineteenth century.^{Footnote 93} In 1913, fifty-year-old Kim Unsŏng of Kyŏngnam Province was arrested for selling a drug of his own making without any registration.^{Footnote 94} So was thirty-three-year-old Pak Yunok, who sold unauthorized drugs in 1914.^{Footnote 95} It was not just Koreans who preyed upon their unsuspecting compatriots. In August 1921, a group of six Japanese peddlers from the city of Hiroshima with twenty-six-year-old Shimizu Sakumatsu as their leader identified themselves as a peddling squad of the Hiroshima Nursing Home and went house to house, coercing consumers to purchase drugs for charitable causes.^{Footnote 96} In 1927, sixty-year-old Matsumoto Yasuo from Nagasaki was arrested and sentenced to jail for twenty days on account of having entered the house of Shimano Ume without permission and coercing him to purchase a drug.^{Footnote 97} Peddlers and retailers of patent medicine also often misrepresented themselves as medical doctors. In 1912, twenty-four-year-old Chŏng Yŏngdal, feigning to be a doctor from Ch’ŏngju Regional Hospital, called upon local notables to bring him patients to whom he then sold his medicines.^{Footnote 98} In a similar fashion, fifty-six-year-old Pang Ch’ilchong was fined 25 wŏn in July 1918 for self-identifying as a doctor-cum-acupuncturist and for charging exorbitant fees for his medical “service.”^{Footnote 99} Consumers found fraudsters in both genders. In November 1928, Ch’oe Jaebok of P’yŏngyang, who only had a permit as a retailer of patent medicine, was fined for treating hemorrhoids and uterine diseases without a doctor’s license; however, her fine of 20 wŏn was less than the 33 wŏn she had received from her two “patients” with uterine diseases.^{Footnote 100}

Not surprisingly, the uneducated and unsuspecting rural poor often became the most piteous victims of profit-driven peddlers and retailers. In January 1928, the newspaper Chung’oe ilbo reported an egregious practice of deceptive sales tactics that even involved a number of reputable manufacturers and wholesalers in Keijō such as Chosŏn mobŏm maeyak sanghoe, Chosŏn sanghoe, and Sakamoto seiyakusho.^{Footnote 101} According to the article, the scheme to defraud rural peasants was an extreme abuse of the “use first and pay later” system of the Toyama merchants. In early January on the lunar calendar, thousands of peddlers dispersed themselves into villages and towns throughout the peninsula, packing pouches of drugs that they had purchased at 0.2 wŏn per pack from wholesalers. In remote mountainous villages, they simply tossed drug pouches that now cost 1 wŏn per pack, five times the original cost, to houses regardless of approval from the owners. All they did was simply record the name of the owner of each house. When some villagers refused to accept the unsolicited drugs, the peddlers rebuked them for not recognizing their purpose—the drugs, they said, were being distributed by the local township office, military, or police office for the dissemination of hygienic measures. Apparently, rural peasants did not dare to challenge these noble messengers of hygiene. Then, in the fall, around the time of harvesting, the peddlers returned to these villages to collect payment, often taking whatever possessions they could get from these poor tenants. As the reporter concludes with disdain, the 700,000 wŏn increase in the sales of patent medicine made that year came through the extortion of tenant farmers and the rural poor.

But it was not just the deceptive marketing practices of peddlers that haunted the industry; the flood of compromised drugs containing low-quality or even deadly ingredients was also a serious concern that further undermined the image of patent medicine. In December 1922, the newspaper Maeil shinbo reported the consternating results of a recent inspection of patent medicine by the Sanitation Department of Kyŏnggi Province. In Kyŏnggi Province, which included Keijō, between 12,000 and 13,000 kinds of drugs had been registered as approved patent medicines, of which about 7,000 to 8,000 were actually being manufactured and marketed to consumers at the time. When a team of four governmental experts and six inspectors tested about 2,000 patent medicines in the market, they were astounded by what they found—more than 1,300 or greater than 65 percent were adulterated products.^{Footnote 102} Flabbergasted by this preliminary result, the Sanitation Department initiated an almost three-month-long test of 1,126 patent medicines of 117 manufacturers in December 1922. The results were not reassuring, if not outright distressing. Only 410 products passed the test, whereas 253 products were deemed passable with minor modifications. Of the remainder, 247 products received warnings, 62 were classified for retesting, and finally, 154 were banned from manufacturing and marketing.^{Footnote 103} In other words, only 36 percent of products passed the inspection successfully, and even when including those “deemed passable,” the percentage was only 58.5 percent. Given this widespread practice of adulteration, it is not surprising that although rare, some patient deaths from the consumption of patent drugs did occur. For instance, in October 1925, thirty-year-old Kim Saryong in South Hamgyŏng Province died after consuming patent medicine to alleviate malaria-like symptoms. The incident resulted in the arrest of Kim’s younger brother, who brandished a butcher’s knife at the seller of the patent medicine.^{Footnote 104}

Where did manufacturers find the audacity to modify ingredients and market potentially dangerous drugs to unsuspecting consumers? The surprising degree of noncompliance that disconcerted colonial inspectors was in large part their own doing. According to the 1912 Regulation on Medicinal Affairs (薬品及び薬品営業取締令), designated inspectors, who were in many cases civilian police or military police, had the authority to inspect places in which drug merchants manufactured, prescribed, stored, or displayed patent medicine.^{Footnote 105} The authority of inspectors was further clarified in subsequent ordinances such as the Code on the Inspection of Patent Medicine (1912), the Rule on the Monitoring of Medicinal Goods (1913), and the Procedure for the Implementation of the Rule on the Inspection of Medical Goods (1914).^{Footnote 106} Because of this seemingly elaborate system of regulations and because of the placement of authority in the hands of the local police departments, historians have often believed that the colonial control over patent medicine was thorough and effective,^{Footnote 107} even prefiguring similar measures in the imperial mainland.^{Footnote 108} Yet the reality on the ground was far from ideal. Inspectors were easily bought by hush money or “wining and dining.”^{Footnote 109} In one extreme case in 1929, a local sanitation department was in collusion with a retailer. Sŏng Gwangshik, a patent medicine retailer, was forcing local restaurateurs to purchase a drug named Sandogu that was primarily effective in the prevention of sexually transmitted diseases but also good for contraception and even dandruff. What infuriated restaurant owners was that Sŏng was peddling this drug in tandem with a local police officer from the sanitation department who coerced them to buy it at 1.5 wŏn per pack. When the reporter visited the chief of the sanitation department for an answer, the chief acknowledged that he instructed the police officer to “guide well” but denied that people were being coerced to buy unnecessarily.^{Footnote 110}

The sustained growth of the patent medicine market in the 1910s and 1920s owed much to the presence and engagement of peddlers and retailers. Physically delivering the promise of instant cures that manufacturers detailed in illustrated advertisements and conspicuously displayed street signs, peddlers and retailers personified patent medicine and linked manufacturers and wholesalers to their end clients. Their aggressive marketing practices, however, often veered dangerously into deception and fraud that increasingly tarnished the reputation of the entire industry. The fact that many of these drugs were adulterated and therefore did not have their promised efficacy did not help the overall image of the patent medicine industry either. As reform-minded journalists started to voice their concerns, professional pharmacists started to join their endeavors, but, as I will show in the next section, their intertwined interests with the patent medicine industry significantly circumscribed the boundaries of their reform activities.

Noble Intentions, Intertwined Interests, and Lukewarm Responses

The detrimental effects of patent medicine and the concomitant suffering of Korean consumers did not go unnoticed by medical professionals. As such, from the late 1920s, calls for the reform of the industry grew louder. Standing at the forefront of this reform effort was a nascent group of pharmacists licensed in modern pharmacology, Koryŏ yakchesahoe (the Koryŏ Association of Pharmacists, 高麗藥劑師會, hereafter KAP) that four Korean pharmacists created in February 1928.^{Footnote 111} From the start, KAP made it clear that bringing more effective regulation to the market of patent medicine was its top priority. During its organizing meeting in 1928, KAP emphatically declared that the pharmaceutical industry, blinded by its profit-seeking urge, had lost its fundamental raison d’être of relieving the sick from their suffering. The group’s primary purpose, therefore, was to contribute to the enhancement of the hygiene of the people as a whole. The first concrete plan to fulfill this purpose was to set up a fact-finding committee to investigate cases of fraudulent patent medicine.^{Footnote 112} It also tried, by holding educational lecture events, to inform the Korean people of the distinct role that pharmacists could play as professionally trained medical personnel. The first such event took place in October 1929 when the association invited three Japanese speakers, including the former dean of the Osaka College of Pharmacy, Kimura Hikoemon, who delivered a public lecture on the social influence of science to an audience of more than five hundred people.^{Footnote 113} The call for tougher regulation of fraudulent patent medicine then became a recurring theme of the association. Ultimately, in October 1932, KAP officially filed a petition with the Government-General, exhorting the colonial authorities to fundamentally revamp the existing regulations on drugs. Included in its petition was a plea for the introduction of five new regulations respectively related to pharmacist licenses, patent medicine, specified medicine, herbal medicine, and nonmedical chemicals.^{Footnote 114}

However, all of these suggestions and pleas for intervention did not bear much fruit during the colonial era for two reasons—the enmeshment of pharmacists with the patent medicine industry and the lukewarm response from the lethargic colonial authorities. First, many, if not all, of the leading members of KAP were deeply involved with the patent medicine industry, as was the case with the Japanese-led organization Kankoku yakuzaishikai (Korea Pharmacists Association, 韓国藥劑師會).^{Footnote 115} For instance, Pak Chinwŏn, who took the position of manager of general affairs in 1930, was the owner of the drugstore Kong’aedang yakpang.^{Footnote 116} Pak was a second-generation patent medicine manufacturer, taking ownership of the company from his father Pak Yonghwan, who manufactured Ch’ŏnggoyak (靑膏藥) in competition against Ch’ŏnil yakpang’s bestselling medicinal unguent Chogoyak (趙膏藥).^{Footnote 117} Likewise, Yi Gyŏngbong, the founding chairperson of the association, was the owner of Chesaengdang, one of the largest makers of patent medicine in colonial Korea, manufacturing Ch’ŏngshimbomyŏngdan, the aforementioned derivative of Jintan.^{Footnote 118} Japanese expatriates in colonial Korea were no different. Yamagishi Kenji, the owner of Yamagishi Tenyūdō, graduated from the Tokyo College of Pharmacy (東京薬学校) on the recommendation of Yamagishi Yūtarō, his boss-cum-founder of Yamagishi Tenyūdō and his future father-in-law.^{Footnote 119}

Korean pharmacists’ tight linkage to the patent medicine industry originated in the unique colonial situation, in which merchants of patent medicine became directly involved in the foundation of the one and only pharmacy school in colonial Korea. In 1912, the Government-General in colonial Korea promulgated a series of regulations related to pharmaceuticals and those who handled them, which specified that only licensed pharmacists trained in modern pharmacology (藥劑師) were to be permitted to dispense physician-ordered prescriptions.^{Footnote 120} Accordingly, there would now be two venues to become a licensed pharmacist—either graduating from a recognized pharmaceutical college or department of pharmacology of a university or passing the license examination that was to be administered by the governor-general in Korea.^{Footnote 121} Here, the primary intention of the colonial authorities was to regulate the chaotic medicinal commodities market by mandating a group of professional pharmacists as a vehicle to bring expertise and high scientific standards to the process. But what actually happened was the swift move by Korean merchants of herbal medicine and Japanese wholesalers of patent medicine to create a pharmacy school in colonial Korea to preemptively appropriate the image of expertise to facilitate their businesses.^{Footnote 122} In July 1914, Yagŏpch’onghapso (藥業總合所)—the organization of Korean merchants of medicinal herbs created in 1909—organized a summer intensive course, covering basic legal parameters and practices of modern pharmacology.^{Footnote 123} Based upon its success, it started the Chōsen School of Pharmacy (朝鮮藥學講習所) in 1916 with the enthusiastic support of Japanese wholesalers.^{Footnote 124} After changing its name in 1918 to Chōsen yakugakukō, the sole registered school of pharmacy in colonial Korea ultimately produced 234 licensed pharmacists by 1930.^{Footnote 125}

The intertwined relationship of KAP and the patent medicine industry is most clearly exemplified in the case of Yi Gyŏngbong, the founding chairperson of the association. Arguably, Yi was the most well-known voice for tougher regulations well into the late 1930s. According to Yi, the pharmaceutical industry had not lived up to its expectations of enabling each member of society to enjoy health, efficiency, and happiness, which was mainly due to the paucity of pharmacists, but also irresponsibility and lack of effort on the part of the industry. The result was the loss of credibility among consumers and the lack of success in the industry. The situation however was going to change “with the increase of the number of responsible pharmacists…. [who will] strive to align advertisements to the actual efficacy of drugs.”^{Footnote 126} What is ironic, though, is that Yi’s Chesaengdang was known for exuberant marketing practices, even after Yi passed the pharmacist exam in 1926 at the age of twenty-five. For instance, Yi hired professional female entertainers (gisaeng) and an equal number of rickshaws to promote a patent medicine of his company that had the phrase “the Elixir of Eternal Life” in its logo. Each evening, dozens of gisaeng rode rickshaws that had flags bearing the name of Ch’ŏngshimbomyŏngdan around the central boulevards of Keijō. Accompanying these topflight entertainers was a traditional Korean percussion band that played loud music to attract the attention of passersby.^{Footnote 127} Given this tight linkage to the patent medicine industry, therefore, it is not surprising that Korean pharmacists did not envision a radical shift from a world of patent medicine to that of pharmacist-prescribed drugs.^{Footnote 128} In other words, Yi’s attitude toward patent medicine never amounted to total abrogation of the patent industry as a whole. On a related note, medical doctors licensed in biomedicine were not in a position to spearhead the campaign against patent medicine either. As historian Yi Hŭnggi pointed out, due to the high cost of opening a hospital, many private practitioners of biomedicine in colonial Korea worked as in-house physicians of big patent medicine merchants.^{Footnote 129}

Yet it would be unfair to primarily blame the interlocking relations between pharmacists and the patent medicine industry for the failure of the introduction of more effective regulations to the medicinal market. Ultimately, all of these well-intended exhortations had to be accepted and decided by the colonial authorities, not by pharmacists. To the disappointment of pharmacists, throughout the 1920s and 1930s, the ruling authorities in colonial Korea continued to merely gesture toward instituting a more stringent system of regulation. For instance, in May 1929, the Division of Sanitation of the Government-General announced that in the near future the current regulations on medicine and the trade of medicine that had been in practice since 1912 would be revised in line with the regulations of Japan proper. According to this new regulation, which was to consist of three separate parts respectively regarding pharmacists, the sale of medicinal goods, and patent medicine, only licensed pharmacists trained in modern pharmacology would be allowed to participate in the patent medicine trade.^{Footnote 130} But the revision of the regulations did not happen in 1929. Rather, in March 1931, the colonial government merely reaffirmed its desire to revise the current regulations that allowed anyone to manufacture and sell patent medicine with a simple registration with local police. According to Maeil shinbo, the revision that was under consideration by Kunimine Senkichi, the former dean of the Chōsen School of Pharmacy, was clearly in response to the pervasive ill effects of fraudulent patent medicine that the inadequate current regulations helped to proliferate.^{Footnote 131} Despite the 1931 announcement of plans to institute the new legislation in the same year, nothing happened.

Why did the colonial authorities drag their feet on introducing more effective legislation? For one, the colonial government may have felt that the existing regulations were functioning well enough. After all, 363 people were put in jail in 1932 for violating the 1912 regulations related to pharmaceuticals (although their prison terms were all less than six months and without penal servitude).^{Footnote 132} In addition, while it accounted for less than half a percent of the overall import volume from Japan to Korea, the ever-growing quantity of patent medicine imported from Japan (valued at 1,265,727 yen in 1932 and 1,787,572 yen in 1934) and related economic benefits to manufacturers and merchants in Japan may well have been a factor.^{Footnote 133} Most likely though, the tepid response from the colonial government was a tacit acknowledgement that stronger restrictions on patent medicine, without a significant increase in the number of physicians and pharmacists, would undoubtedly worsen the availability of medical care to Koreans in the colony.^{Footnote 134} This stance is not at all surprising given the Japanese government’s tendency for selective action in regard to public health issues. Although the improvement of hygiene and public health was a crucial element of Japan’s modernizing project both within and without Japan proper,^{Footnote 135} it did not necessarily override other considerations. For instance, as William Johnston superbly illustrated in his book on tuberculosis in modern Japan, leaders in the Japanese government did not immediately intervene to contain the tuberculosis epidemic, even after new etiological discoveries prompted them to do so. Only when high mortality and social conditions “presented a threat to the social order in the form of an obstacle to the imperial and military goals of the state,” did the government finally stir itself into action in the 1930s.^{Footnote 136} From the perspective of the Japanese government, the malpractice of the patent medicine industry, no matter how pervasive and pernicious, never reached that level of threat.

Perhaps the introduction of tighter regulations in Japan proper might have propelled similar stringent measures in the colony. But this did not happen either. On the contrary, the Ministry of Internal Affairs in Japan promulgated a new regulation (賣藥部外品取締規則) in 1932 that allowed those who did not have any training in pharmacology to manufacture and sell miscellaneous medicinal products such as hair-loss inhibitors, smoking-cessation kits, and alcohol-abstinence supplements, which had not been possible previously. As was confidently declared in a 1933 guidebook on how to best to take advantage of this new opportunity, this new regulation was in essence “a lifeline for the unqualified,” for it allowed even more unqualified people to take part in the “golden age of patent medicine” in Japan.^{Footnote 137}

As such, the patent medicine industry in colonial Korea remained a “Wild West,” where regulations were lax, and even when the inspection of the colonial authorities was working properly, the punishment was often too lenient to dissuade further infractions. Here is one revealing example. On May 20, 1933, the newspaper Chosŏn chung’ang ilbo reported that a small manufacturer-cum-retailer of patent medicine in Keijō, Shinsŏngdang yakpang, was suspended from business for two months on account of deceptive advertisements. According to the article, Shinsŏngdang had been placing exaggerated and deceptive advertisements in newspapers since August 1932. For each of these occurrences, the Sanitation Division of the Department of Police Affairs issued warnings, one after another, but the owner of Shinsŏngdang, thirty-six-year-old Kim Haejin, persisted.^{Footnote 138} The last formal warning was even reported in the newspaper. On March 29, 1933, Kim was warned by the Sanitation Division of the Department of Police Affairs of Kyŏnggi Province, and the next day, he was further warned by the chief of the Sanitation Section of the Chongno police station, his local station. On each of these occasions, Kim promised in person that he would never run a false advertisement again.^{Footnote 139} Less than a month later, however, Kim ran a full-page advertisement in the newspaper Tong’a ilbo on April 26 that was full of exaggerated claims and unsubstantiated thank you letters from customers.^{Footnote 140} This clearly defiant action obviously functioned as the last straw that triggered punishment from the colonial government, which was keen on making an example out of this case. By publicizing this case in a national newspaper, the colonial authorities tried to warn makers and sellers of patent medicine. But the real lesson that one could perhaps learn from this case was the inadequacy of regulation, for as early as August 21, only a month after the expiration of his suspension, Shinsŏngdang resumed putting out full-page advertisements saturated with the same exaggerated claims and unsubstantiated customer reviews.^{Footnote 141}

As the colonial government’s promises of more stringent regulation of patent medicine ended up being mere political chest-thumping, consumers in colonial Korea were left in the morass of patent medicine, where only caution and discretion could occasionally guide them out of danger.