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South Korea Health Conditions
The main causes of death traditionally have been respiratory
diseases--tuberculosis, bronchitis, and pneumonia--followed by
gastrointestinal illnesses. However, the incidence and fatality
of both types of illness declined during the 1970s and 1980s.
Diseases typical of developed, industrialized countries--cancer,
heart, liver, and kidney ailments, diabetes, and strokes--were
rapidly becoming the primary causes of death. The incidence of
parasitism, once a major health problem in farming communities
because of the widespread use of night soil as fertilizer, was
reported in the late 1980s to be only 4 percent of what it had
been in 1970. Encephalitis, a viral disease that can be
transmitted to humans by mosquitoes, caused ninety-four deaths in
1982. To reduce fatalities, the Ministry of Health and Social
Affairs planned to vaccinate 17.2 million persons against the
disease by 1988.
The tensions and social dislocations caused by rapid
urbanization apparently increased the incidence of mental
illness. In 1985 the Ministry of Health and Social Affairs began
a large-scale program to expand mental health treatment
facilities by opening mental institutions and requiring that new
hospitals have wards set aside for psychiatric treatment. The
ministry estimated the number of persons suffering from mental
ailments at around 400,000.
South Korea has not been entirely immune from the health and
social problems generally associated with the West, such as
Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS) and addictive drugs. A
handful of AIDS cases was reported during the late 1980s. Seoul
responded by increasing the budget for education programs and
instituting mandatory AIDS testing of prostitutes and employees
of entertainment establishments. An AIDS Prevention Law was
promulgated in November 1987. In late 1989, the government
drafted a law requiring AIDS testing of foreign athletes and
entertainers intending to reside in South Korea without their
spouses for more than three months. Previously, the majority of
those infected with AIDS had been prostitutes working near United
States military bases, oceangoing seamen, and South Koreans
working abroad. In the late 1980s, however, homosexuals began to
account for an increasing number of those infected with the AIDS
virus. The traditional Korean attitude toward homosexuality,
which was to deny its existence, made it extremely difficult to
treat this part of the population. The 200-percent annual
increase in the number of AIDS-infected persons (from one
reported case in 1985 to twenty-two cases in 1988) worried health
officials.
While the use of heroin and other opiates was rare in South
Korea and the use of cocaine limited, the use of crystalline
methamphetamine, or "ice," known in South Korea as
hiroppon, had become a serious problem by the late 1980s.
Estimates of the number of South Korean abusers of this illegal
drug (known in the United States as speed) ranged from 100,000 to
300,000 people in the late 1980s. Because use of the drug was
believed to involve just low-status members of society, such as
prostitutes and gangsters, the problem of hiroppon abuse
had long been ignored in South Korea. The problem received
greater attention from police and other government agencies
during the late 1980s as the drug increased in popularity among
professionals, students, office workers, housewives,
entertainers, farmers, and laborers. Some observers suggested the
drug's popularity was caused in part by a high-pressure work
environment, in which people used hiroppon to cope with
long working hours. It also has been suggested that the tighter
border controls imposed by Seoul have resulted in diverting the
product to the domestic market and contributing to greater
domestic consumption.
An estimated 2,000 to 4,000 kilograms of methamphetamine were
produced within South Korea annually, much of this total destined
for shipment to Taiwan, Japan, and the United States by South
Korean and Japanese yakuza, or gangsters. Since the
majority of users injected the drug intravenously (although
smoking and snorting it were becoming popular), South Korean
health officials were concerned that the drug could contribute to
the spread of AIDS. In 1989 Seoul established a new antinarcotics
division attached to the prosecutor general's office and
increased almost fourfold the number of drug agents.
Data as of June 1990
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