한국사회 제14집 1호(2013년): pp.101-131
Socializing Childbirth: Korea s Family Planning
Program in the 1960s and 1970s*
’
1)
Sohn, Aelee**
ABSTRACT
This study examines Korea’s Family Planning Program in the 1960s and 70s. It
suggests that the Program was more than a population control policy carried out
on women’s bodies; it was a device to form modern subjects. This research
reviews how the will to accumulate knowledge and the will to manage, driving
forces behind modernity, came through in Korea’s Family Planning Program. By
studying documents of the past, this study confirms that women’s bodies,
responsible for childbirth, were put under the management of government
administration and medical devices and to become objects of monitoring and
lawmaking. With the goal of correcting the abnormality of excessive fecundity,
the sex lives of individuals were captured by the surveillance of healthcare
agents and accumulated as demographic data by statisticians. Members of
families with more than three children acknowledged themselves as abnormal
primitives. Based on this, this study shows that Korea’s Family Planning Program
was a modern enlightenment campaign driven by the modern ideals of
knowledge and management under the authoritarian military regime, leading to a
new type of modern subject.
KEY WORDS: Family Planning Program, South Korea, Park Chung-hee
Regime, Modernity, Modern Subject
* This work was supported by the National Research Foundation of Korea Grant
funded by the Korean Government (NRF-2008-362-A00001)
** HK research professor, Asiatic Research Institute, Korea University
102 한국사회 제14집 1호(2013년)
Ⅰ. Introduction
Modern society began with the management of population, labor and
everyday lives of the people. Malthusianism, Britain’s Poor Law and
Protestantism were all apparatuses developed to manage these three key
factors. Korea also followed suit when it belatedly joined the ranks of
modern states after World War II. By managing the above-mentioned three
areas with such modernization projects as the Family Planning Program, the
Economic
Development
Plan,
and
the
Saemaeul(New
Community)
Movement, Korea saw a smooth rise to the stature of other modern states.
This study looks into Korea’s Family Planning Program in the 1960s and
70s. Family planning generally refers to a government-led population control
policy to regulate and control women’s fertility with the provision of a
variety of birth control methods.1) After its rise to power with a coup in
May 1961, the regime of President Park Chung-hee (1963-1979) actively
proceeded with the Family Planning Program under the first Five-Year
Economic Development Plan. Its core underlying premise was that
population control was key to the country’s economic development. Adopted
as one of the government’s central policies, the Family Planning Program
was first carried out under a basic framework of agents, goals and
designated doctors. Meanwhile, the Planned Parenthood Federation of
1) Population policy consists of two types: population regulation and population
response. The former involves policies to control population growth, decentralize
the population and improve population quality. The Family Planning Program,
emigration policy, and population decentralization policies are all examples of
Korean regulation policies. Response policy, on the other hand, relates primarily
to housing, food and education facilities. In Korea, this consisted of social,
economic, cultural and educational measures against population change. Park
Chung-hee’s administration focused on population control policy: namely, the
Family Planning Program. See KIHASA 1991b: 53-65.
Socializing Childbirth: Korea’s Family Planning Program in the 1960s and 1970s 103
Korea(PPFK), a private organization, was active in leading a campaign to
attract foreign investment and enlightenment projects. The combination of
these efforts resulted in a remarkable outcome in under a generation.2)
The PPFK was set up in 1961 as a private organization with the aid
provided by the International Planned Parenthood Federation(IPPF). The
PPFK defined the family planning movement as “a movement for stronger
parental responsibility towards children, a public health movement to
enhance mother and child health, and a cultural movement to improve
people’s economic lives”(PPFK, 1991: 111). The moral and cultural
movement initiated by a private organization was able to affect the whole
population primarily because it was mixed with the discourse of economic
development driven by the government regime. Upon launching the
movement, PPFK president Yang Jae-Mo submitted a statistics report on
population
trends
as
support
for
a
policy
suggestion
that
the
population-controlling Family Planning Program was necessary for economic
growth. In the report presented at the Supreme Meeting of the Military
Committee in 1961, Yang added an estimate that with an investment of one
billion won per year over a ten year period, a drop in the crude birth rate
from 42 to 21 would save more than a hundred times the investment due
to a lack of child rearing costs from age 0--14 for children whose births
were “prevented”(PPFK, 1991: 112). Yang also noted that the function of
children as crucial labor power in a traditional agricultural society was no
longer efficient in the 1960s era of industrialization. Furthermore, women
2) The total fertility rate fell from 6 in 1960 to 3.2 in 1976 and further down to
2.1 in 1984, which was the population replacement level. The proportion of
couples exercising birth control rose sharply from 44.2% in 1976 to 77.1% in
1988, with the method changing from taking contraceptive pills to having an
operation. The population growth rate also declined from 2.88% in 1960 to
2.00% in 1970, 1.57% in 1980, and 0.93% in 1990. See Hong 1998: 203.
104 한국사회 제14집 1호(2013년)
were considered more economically productive working in urban factories
rather than marrying in their twenties and having large families.
Indeed, having many children versus few was associated with such
opposite representation as traditional versus modern, unsophisticated versus
sophisticated, rural versus urban, uneducated versus highly-educated. All
kinds of media were mobilized to get rid of the unfamiliarity associated
with family planning. Number-emphasizing slogans not only appeared in
newspapers, on the radio and on TV but also on buses, subways, and public
institutions. Messages even showed up on stamps, cigarette cases,
performance tickets and housing lottery tickets. Details of these slogans
varied from a direct threat that the earth would collapse due to population
explosion to contrasting a poor family with many children to a happy
four-member family.3) It truly was a nation-wide enlightenment campaign.
Focusing on the effect of Korea’s Family Planning Program, this study
aims to review the policy from an historic perspective. It offers the view
that the Program went beyond a population control policy regarding
women’s bodies and was about the formation of modern subjects. It also
attempts to confirm by reviewing the documents of the past how the will to
accumulate knowledge and the will to manage, driving forces of modernity,
came through in Korea’s Family Planning Program.
3) Representative slogans of each period with regard to family planning were as
follows: 1) 1960s slogans: “3/3/35: Let’s have three children at three-year
intervals and stop childbirth before the age of 35,” “The wealth and power of
our family start with family planning,” “Having few children and raising them
well benefits both parents and children:” 2) 1970s slogans: “One child per
family already crowds the land of Korea,” “Population explosion: scarier than
nuclear explosion,” “Having two children is a thing of the past -- first-rate
people have only one child,” “A well brought-up daughter is worth ten sons,”
“The shortcut to family planning: vasectomy and tubal sterilization,” “The bigger
the population, the less the welfare.” See PPFK August 1968-May 1976.
Socializing Childbirth: Korea’s Family Planning Program in the 1960s and 1970s 105
Ⅱ. Perspective: the Formation of Modern Subjects
Previous studies on Korea’s Family Planning Program fall into one of the
following three categories. First, there are studies that examine and evaluate
the Program from a policy perspective. These studies were conducted when
the Program was in place and aimed at improving and developing
government policies on population and family planning. Research documents
of this period include reports from government research centers such as the
Korea Institute for Health and Social Affairs(KIHASA) and studies from
university research centers (PPFK 1962-1985; PPFK 1991; KIFP 1971-1980;
KIFP 1978; KIFP 1979; EPB 1977; EPB 1981; EPB 1983; KIPH 1981;
KIPH 1986a; KIPH 1986b; KIHASA 1991a; KIHASA 1991b; KIHASA
1992). The advantages of these documents are found in their faithful
description of the Program. However, with their goal of improving the
efficiency of the government policy, such studies have the limitation of
viewing individuals as mere policy recipients.
Second, there are studies conducted by feminist researchers critical of the
first category of studies(Bae, 2012; Lee, 1989, Byun, 1991; Kim, 1991;
Kim, 1996). Bae Eun-Kyung analyzed the effect of the government’s birth
control policy on women’s fertility behavior through in-depth interviews
with rural village residents. She pointed out that in national discussions of
childbirth, women’s understanding did not come first and women were
unable to control their bodies on their own. Her study is significant because
it criticizes a situation in which the right of childbirth was not determined
by women but by the interest of the state. However, studies in this category
confine government’s family planning policies to women’s issues only and
fail to ask further questions in the broader social context. They also lack an
106 한국사회 제14집 1호(2013년)
empirical analysis of the technologies and devices mobilized by the
government for its childbirth policy.
The final category of studies involves papers that analyze the Family
Planning Program from the point of view of the patriarchal capitalistic
state(Kim, 2008; Kim, 1993). In her analysis of family planning and
childcare policies, Kim Mee-Hyun argues that Korea’s family policy had
been determined for the benefit of capitalist, state and patriarchal systems
Her study is significant because it points out that Family Planning Program
under the names of mother and child health and family wellbeing was
actually a means to secure the types of family and labor power necessary
for industrial capitalism in the 1960s and 70s. Studies of this kind are
limited by their belief that the goals of capitalistic government’ policies and
actions all converge into a capitalistic interest.
Despite their different perspectives and goals, these studies share the
premise that the government exercised formidable power over individuals
and women’s bodies in order to carry out the birth control policy. The
question is whether it is reasonable to postulate that the state lies at the
center of the power in carrying out the policies. One must wonder about the
appropriateness of attributing to the single power of the coup government all
the causes of events that brought significant changes to the order of people’s
lives. Moreover, it seems insufficient to consider Family Planning Program
as merely a population control program carried out by a state on women’s
bodies for the purpose of economic development. Although these
understandings bespeak the success of the state-led population control policy
with the total fertility rate falling from 6 to 2.1 in twenty years, they are
silent on the modern social devices which enabled the program’s success,
and on the changes in people’s lives as a result of its policies.
This study begins by questioning such premises and understandings. It
Socializing Childbirth: Korea’s Family Planning Program in the 1960s and 1970s 107
aims to focus on the process by which women, citizens, people and
population are constructed through the operation of power. In other words,
under the state-run campaign of “Let’s Not Have Children,” the bodies of
women of childbearing age were newly constructed at homes and healthcare
facilities, whereas the construction of men’s bodies was done in the military,
the bodies of students at school and the bodies of low-income female
factory workers in factories. Taking note of such change in the mode of
subjectivation, this study proposes to review Korea’s Family Planning
Program from the following points of view.
First, women’s bodies became the physical arena on which the knowledge
and discourse surrounding Family Planning Program were eventually
inscribed. The Program made it a goal to regulate the total population by
making individual bodies its objects. Here, individual childbearing bodies
were no longer the bodies of individuals but things to be put under the
management of government administration and medical devices due to the
threat of the “disease” of an excessive birth rate. The individual body was
the object of monitoring and lawmaking. Women’s bodies and childbirth
were viewed and described in a certain way and a discourse was created to
distinguish normal from abnormal and modern from outdated. At the same
time, with the preparation of devices to transform the discourse into an
institution, the government’s childbirth policy came into operation.
Second, the Family Planning Program made the private sphere of sex and
childbirth an area of medical, social science, and health administration
intervention. Behaviors previously considered private became something to
be managed by the government under the name of social security and
economic development. In other words, with the goal of correcting the
abnormality of the excessive birth rate, the sex life of individuals was
captured by the surveillance of healthcare agents and accumulated as
108 한국사회 제14집 1호(2013년)
demographic data by statisticians to be put under the management of social
scientists and doctors.
Third, the Family Planning Program was a device to make a modern
human type. The Program stipulated the number of children a normal family
should have and the type of birth control a normal family should use. This
made visible the borders between familiar and unfamiliar, natural and
unnatural, and normal and abnormal. In order to maintain the type of
childbirth required by society, people were produced to learn the new
discipline, be more obedient to the discipline by accepting their usefulness,
and finally internalize the new social order with the discipline as part of it.
From this perspective, it can be learned that the knowledge/discourse
surrounding the human body and childbirth does bear a relationship to the
creation of a new social order and way of living. In other words, the
scientific treatment of the childbirth is linked to a control over humans. For
this reason, it is meaningful to review the Family Planning Program in light
of Korea’s current situation: the government is now encouraging families to
have more children because of the declining population caused by a low
birth rate.
This study refers to three main categories of documents. First, there are
documents published by government institutions such as the Ministry of
Health and Social Affairs, the Korea Institute for Family Planning(KIFP),
the Planned Parenthood Federation of Korea(PPFK) and the Korea Institute
for Population and Health(KIPH). These publications are useful in
understanding the Program in detail; The second category is the discourse
on body and childbirth expressed in the Friend of the Family, an official
periodical of the Planned Parenthood Federation of Korea, and the slogans
and mottos that appeared in various media. These types of materials make
it possible to trace the discourse on childbirth ranging from social reform to
Socializing Childbirth: Korea’s Family Planning Program in the 1960s and 1970s 109
economic development and from anti-modernity to women’s rights. The
third category comprises research reports on the Family Planning Program
produced by doctors, social scientists, statisticians and health care agents.
The category also includes contributions and memoirs by government
officials, doctors and scholars who carried out the Program.
Ⅲ. The Will to Knowledge: Surveys about and
Statistics on Women’s Bodies
As late as the 1960s, Koreans believed in the maxims “more sons, more
fortune” and that “babies are born with their own fortune.” People
considered children insurance measures for their later years, viewing them as
“successors to keep the bloodline and hold ancestral rites.” There was a firm
belief that a population of at least fifty million people was necessary for
economic development. Birth control was seen as a hindrance to sexual
morality that went against Catholic doctrine. Therefore, the idea of
controlling childbirth was a very unfamiliar one. “Family planning” was a
difficult concept to swallow, even for officials in the Ministry of Health and
Social Affairs, the main agency implementing the policy. The Ministry had
to carry out the Family Planning Program under the name of “mother and
child health”　rather than “family planning.” The necessary awareness to
carry out family planning was virtually non-existent. Therefore, a certain
type of rationality and social structure was a prerequisite for defining the
fecund female body as a social problem. In other words, various layers of
social requirements and knowledge needed to be in place. These included an
economy-centered value system, the spread of discourse on the fear of
110 한국사회 제14집 1호(2013년)
population explosion, the development of statistics to determine the size and
characteristics of the population, feminism, and the emergence of an
economic system in need of women’s labor.
Demography facilitated the awareness of a population crisis and
strengthened the belief that fertility behavior could be controlled.
Demography and statistics, a new science in Korea, came to hold firm
positions and became central tools in carrying out policies under the name
of value neutrality. Statistics points out when a certain undesirable situation
is on the rise or decline and also tells whether the change is regular, up to
a certain level. A change in a situation does not constitute a social problem
just because it is pathological. It is defined as a social problem and comes
under social management and political investment when it cannot be
explained by existing values or treated with appropriated preventive
measures. In other words, childbirth was not a social problem when
population numbers were converted into labor power in an agricultural
society and fertility was welcomed. The excessive birth rate　became a
problem in a society where people needed to be trained as urban workers.
In carrying out the Family Planning Program, Korea’s military regime
furthered the cause of “protecting society” against excessive population
growth. This justification was supported by such scientific discourse as
statistics, social science, social medicine, eugenics and the Mother and Child
Health Act. Researchers set up a statistics research center to figure out exact
population numbers, held symposiums, and published journals to study
various related aspects such as marriage, birth rates, disease and housing.4)
4) According to the 1979 Family Planning Program directory, four government
agencies, six special corporations, forty-one universities or affiliated institutions,
and thirty other institutions were enrolled as Family Planning Program-related
research institutions. See KIHASA 1991b: 99-165.
Socializing Childbirth: Korea’s Family Planning Program in the 1960s and 1970s 111
They helped to ask a new question regarding childbirth by paying attention
to poverty, disease and crimes associated with children who lacked proper
care. In governing a state, it is a well-known fact that statistics is a
necessary field of study to analyze, calculate and manage the population. As
late as 1962, when the Family Planning Program was launched, the only
relevant statistics available were about the basic population growth rate, the
result of the 1960 Population Census(KIHASA, 1991a: 10). Tracing the
progress of the Program and evaluating its effectiveness required a factual
picture of the population. With the help of American demographers, an
effort was made to analyze the population more accurately, set up research
centers, and nurture experts.
From 1964, the Ministry of Health and Social Affairs had the capacity to
conduct surveys on family planning. Conducted every one to years, the
survey consisted of various questions ranging from knowledge about and
attitudes toward family planning, practices, fertility, abortion, mother and
child
health,
marriage
type,
family
life
cycle,
family
life,
and
welfare(KIHASA, 1991b: 421-422). The research was carried out by
government agencies and social and medical scientists. At the helm of the
Program’s research efforts was a research team from the Yonsei University
College of Medicine. They conducted a survey of rural residents in 1962
regarding childbirth, birth control knowledge and practices, abnormal
childbirth, failed pregnancies, and the adaptability of the intra-uterine device.
In 1964, the Seoul University Department of Social Studies research team
surveyed urban women of childbearing age about their knowledge and
attitudes toward family planning, experience, fertility, birth rates, perceived
reasonable number of children, the number of children they had, and marital
status. The survey result was used for social engineering to disseminate
contraception
pills
and
devices
and
carry
out
enlightenment
112 한국사회 제14집 1호(2013년)
campaigns(PPFK, 1991: 121-122).
The Family Planning Program, a project of new body politics, was
determined to a large extent by medical professionals. It was doctors who
first paid heed to the demographic crisis and made it a legitimate issue for
government control and scientific research. Doctors classified women’s
bodies as either pregnant or non-pregnant. At the peak of the Family
Planning movement, the goal of doctors was to make fertile bodies infertile.
Medical science joined hands with normality, and not with health.5)
From the beginning of the project, doctors were responsible for
performing vasectomies, disseminating condoms and contraceptive jelly, and
training health agents. By leading the spread of oral contraceptives and
sterilization operations and by introducing the Menstrual regulation
procedure(1974) and intra-uterine devices like the Copper T(1983), they
made women’s bodies a place for technology and science. With doctors in
key posts in the government medical administration agencies, their ideas and
practices continually affected government policies. The Family Planning
Program particularly enchanted social reformist and humanitarian doctors,
who
spearheaded
the
Program
with
the
mission
of
progressive
activists(PPFK, 1991: 328-369). Medicine had become a social science, with
the transformation of individuals’ bodies into something social and the
replacement of treatment by the logic of prevention.
The duty of doctors in 1960s Korea was to protect society from the threat
5) Most cultures employ three mechanisms--religion, law and medicine--as means of
categorizing individuals as normal or abnormal and as a way of controlling
people to maintain society. Religion regulates the physical body in order to
develop the spiritual being, whereas law regulates the physical body to protect
individuals and groups from crime. Medicine, the most powerful measure of
controlling a human body, has come to control the population as well as
individual bodies. See Turner 1997: 13-19.
Socializing Childbirth: Korea’s Family Planning Program in the 1960s and 1970s 113
of the disease of fecundity. Once the human body-- perceived as a threat-was defined as a social problem, preventive measures followed. This made
possible investigation and intervention in hitherto forbidden areas. With the
use of such words as “prevention,” “preservation,” and “balance,” preventive
medicine created the impression that the social body needed to be preserved
and protected from the germs prevalent in society. Doctors did not hesitate
to define so-called normal sexual behavior and childbirth, recommend the
maximum number of children per family, and ask the government to support
the creation of the proper size of family for society. The health and medical
sector at that time viewed the high birth rate as a pathological phenomenon
requiring medical treatment. It searched for possible political or physical
problems in people that caused childbirth and made it its mission to review
countermeasures against the phenomenon.
Ⅳ. The Will to Manage: Trained Health Agents and
Discipline in Everyday Life
With the efforts of social scientists and medical doctors, the argument for
birth control became internalized in the conscience of individuals and
opened a new sphere for government intervention. Such scientific discourse,
however, was not instantly inscribed in the conscience and bodies of people
to create a certain lifestyle. Subjectivation is complete when individuals are
made the object of monitoring and management through the power of
classification, recording, evaluation and punishment(Foucault 2003: 33-34).
Since the Family Planning Program was launched with the goal of
economic development, the government lacked a specific department with
114 한국사회 제14집 1호(2013년)
the expertise to run the project. The early days of the Program saw the
involvement of the Department of Health, under the Disinfection Bureau,
and the Local Medical Policy Department in the Medical Policy Bureau.
The Health Bureau of the Ministry of Health and Social Affairs took over
the project in 1962. The Ministry of Health and Social Affairs took care of
program planning, budget support, adjustment, and management, while
overall planning, oversight, and goal-setting was done by the Economic
Planning Board. By issuing the Prime Minister’s Directive No.18 in
September 1963, the government elevated the status of the Family Planning
Program into a national project.6)
The project was carried out by the public health center of each
municipality in every city or province under the Ministry of Health and
Social Affairs. Health agents dispatched to the local front line were
6) Details of the policy were as follows: 1) The Economic Planning Board set up
and operated the Population Policy Deliberation Committee to formulate and
advise on policies on population, family planning, employment, labor export and
population statistics; 2) the Ministry of Education developed a curriculum and
assigned facilities for family planning education and conducted family planning
education for students; 3) the Ministry of Culture and Public Information utilized
Ministry-affiliated media, cultural centers, and the Association of Theaters to
carry out comprehensive enlightenment campaigns; 4) the Ministry of National
Defense devised a plan to utilize military surgeons to provide education on
family planning and conduct vasectomies, and had operations performed on
willing participants with more than three children; 5) the Ministry of Commerce
and Industry set up Family Planning Counseling Centers in businesses and
carried out enlightenment campaigns. It also nurtured and developed facilities
that produced contraceptive devices and cooperated in issuing import permits for
related raw materials and devices; 6) the Ministry of Home Affairs ordered that
the Family Planning Program be included in the unit performance evaluations of
local administrations; 7) the Ministry of Finance exempted imported
contraceptive pills and devices from tax; 8) the Ministry of Postal Services
issued commemorative stamps; 9) the Ministry of Justice reviewed the necessity
of the Eugenic Protection Law. See KIHASA 1991b: 78.
Socializing Childbirth: Korea’s Family Planning Program in the 1960s and 1970s 115
responsible for one-on-one publicity and the spread of contraceptives.
Family planning counseling centers were set up in 183 public health centers
across the country in 1962 with nurses and a midwife in each center. A
senior advisor was appointed in each center the following year. With
enlightenment agents sent to 1,473 local towns in 1964, the number of
family planning agents totaled 2,200 in 1965( PPFK, 1962-1964). While
family planning counseling and the dissemination of contraceptives were the
main directives of the project in its early days, program contents shifted
with the appointment of family planning agents in 1964. These agents
visited each household in their jurisdiction. In the two years from 1968 to
1969, approximately 20,000 agents were trained and dispatched to the front
line. The agents sent to rural and urban areas were responsible for 1)
enlightenment, 2) “tracking down” those subject to birth control, 3) the
distribution of contraceptive pills or devices, 4) contraceptive operations and
5) guidance for and the management of contraceptive recipients.7)
The efficiency of agents’ work was managed by a goal system,
performance evaluation and reporting. Specific objectives were set and a
7) In large cities, one agent in a public health center was responsible for an average
of 7,032 married women. In small and medium-sized cities, the number was an
average of 5,444 married women per agent. Agents were in charge of mother
and child health, tuberculosis management, and family planning. Among these,
family planning took the largest proportion of an agent’s work, with home visits
accounting for 79.7% of work done. Counseling center visitors comprised 41.9%
of the work done by agents and identifying those subject to exercise family
planning was 47% of agents’ work. Agents spent an average of 17 days per
month on visiting homes and counseled an average of 2.7 out of ten homes. The
rate at which they identified those subject to family planning was very high, at
92%. Agents utilized such materials as resident registration rolls, resident
population surveys and family planning cards. Family planning cards were made
with information from the resident registration roll and then revised later with
confirmed information on birth control practice which agents collected while
visiting homes. See KIPH 1988a.
116 한국사회 제14집 1호(2013년)
precise calculation followed.
The number
of recipients per each
contraceptive method was specified as a goal for each year, in accordance
with the number of births to be prevented in order for the birth rate to drop.
A yearly goal was assigned to each public health center by taking into
account the size of the population and the previous year’s performance.
Each public health center’s goal was then assigned to family planning agents
belonging to the region, making families and the bodies of individuals mere
objects of the Program. All that was left in this process was a goal and
performance or social engineering ideas.8)
The main mechanism helping the project to grow and achieve penetration
was the agents’ project reports, written as part of the goal system. Report
details included contraceptive use and the pregnancy status of the people
under the agents’ jurisdiction: the benefits accompanying contraceptive
measures; the number of contraceptive pills distributed and in stock;
contraceptive methods; contraceptives used depending on the number of
children in a household; and the status of newly pregnant women. Agents
visited each household to review the situation, and then persuaded or coaxed
women with supportive measures. To apply for the operation and claim
8) The performance of the Program was scored as follows. 1. The goals of each
contraceptive method vs. performance (60 points) 1) Intra-uterine devices (20
points) = (accumulated performance until the end of given month/yearly
goal)×(given month/12) ×20 2) Sterilization operations (25 points) =
(accumulated performance until the end of given month/yearly goal)×(given
month/12) ×20 3) Condoms and pills (15 points) = Monthly performance/average
monthly goal×15. 2. The contraceptive operation’s excess records (8 points) 1)
Intra-uterine device’s excess records (3 points) 2) Sterilization operation’s excess
records (5 points). 3. Contraceptive operation results by children alive (18
points) 1) Intra-uterine devices (8 points) 2) Sterilization operations (10 points).
4. Program management conditions (14 points) 1) Reporting the date and
accuracy of monthly report (2 points) 2) Field guidance and confirmation of
results (2 points) See KIHASA (1991b), pp.189-190
Socializing Childbirth: Korea’s Family Planning Program in the 1960s and 1970s 117
operation costs, applicants were required to fill out a contraceptive operation
request and confirmation sheet, with answers required to detailed and private
questions. Items included the operation type, the applicant’s and spouse’s
resident registration numbers, insurance coverage, level of education, age at
the time of marriage, number of children, the birth date of the couple’s
youngest child, abortion history, recent contraceptive measures used,
requested contraceptive measures, and more. The records were used to
evaluate the performance of each agent(KIHASA, 1991b: 183-184).
The record system maximized the efficiency of the Program. It brought
the once-private arena of sex into open discussion and made it something to
be calculated and managed. Sex was scientifically explained, classified,
enlightened upon and educated about by a family planning agent in a market
place crowded with people. Pregnancy was newly defined as just a
combination of a sperm and an egg, which could and needed to be
prevented if one was to be economically and culturally affluent. Scientific
explanations, goals and measures to prevent pregnancies, observations and
recordings by agents who were stationed at homes, markets, schools and
every corner of people’s lives: these were the mechanisms used to turn the
individual’s body into a social one.
Technologies to manage and tally bodies were used not only for the
surveillance of government agencies but also in everyday spaces like
schools, the military and workplaces. Students learned about the earth’s
population crisis and the correlation between the economy and population.
They were taught that the issues of population and the economy took
precedence over the lives of individuals. They came to have a theoretical
and practical attitude that it was good for individuals to have only two
children in order to overcome a population crisis. Aims set by the national
curriculum included: “Getting students to understand the impact of family
118 한국사회 제14집 1호(2013년)
size on family life and helping them to appropriately judge the reasonable
size of a family” and “Teaching students that a nation’s proper population
size consists of the right number of children in a family, and helping
students to form an appropriate attitude toward family planning.” One study
determined that information about family planning and population
constituted 5.1% and 4.1% of the content of high school textbooks(Shin
1976: 205, 220-230). Teachings about population and family planning were
not confined to high schools. They were also included in the curricula of
colleges of education in every university. Colleges of medicine and nursing
included population and family planning as compulsory courses.
Meanwhile, as a concentrated locale for those subject to the project, the
military was under the active oversight and surveillance of the Family
Planning Program. Reserve forces, in particular, consisting of the most
reproductive male population of ages below 35, accounted for 60% of the
total population subject to Family Planning Program. Through enlightenment
education the Program encouraged men in the ranks to exercise family
planning, and focused specifically on performing vasectomies. Family
planning was a part of the basic curriculum of reserve force training. When
a trainee asked for a vasectomy operation, he received it and was exempted
from the rest of training. As a result, in 1983, 43,358(44.6%) out of 97,150
men who received vasectomies were members of the reserved forces. The
number skyrocketed to 83,527(67.8%) out of 123,222 men in 1984(KIPH
1986a: 36-38).
Once there was some progress in schools and the military, the next
members of the population to be targeted were factory workers. The Labor
Bureau set up a department to carry out the family planning of the male
workers who had flocked to urban factories with industrialization of the
1960s. The Bureau recommended that factories of more than one hundred
Socializing Childbirth: Korea’s Family Planning Program in the 1960s and 1970s 119
employees stipulate family planning related contents in their collective
agreements and employment regulations. It also operated family planning
clinics in factories of more than five hundred employees. The government
revised the corporate tax enforcement ordinance so that spending on family
planning could be treated as an expense. A considerable number of
companies granted three-day paid leaves to those who received contraceptive
operations. It was capitalists who had first paid attention to family planning.
They recognized that more children in a worker’s family undermined the
family’s economic security as well as the worker’s productivity, leading also
to more industrial disasters(Labor Bureau 1975: 304-307).
Ⅴ. The Will to Care: Mother’s Health and
Women’s Rights
This study has so far examined the disciplinary power that had trained
agents to tame and train human bodies in the venues of everyday life.
Disciplinary power may explain the process of subjectivation of members of
a society; however, it is unable to explain the mechanism through which
people are protected and participate voluntarily. According to Foucault, in
order for a modern state to rise as the main power of a society, it should
transcend disciplinary power to produce and provide care. Power that cares
sets its goals in welfare, wealth and the health of the people(Foucault 2009:
105).
Social insurance is a typical technology for the provision of care by a
modern state. The logic of social insurance offers a new type of social
contract, one not between individuals but between a society and its
120 한국사회 제14집 1호(2013년)
members. From the point view of social insurance, a good society is not
built by the morality of individuals as argued by liberalists, but by
protecting itself against anti-social behaviors. The fundamental goal of social
insurance is not to compensate individuals for damages but to mitigate the
risk to society as a whole. Such a system, therefore, develops better in a
totalitarian regime than in a system claiming to be liberal or democratic.
The Family Planning Program also introduced the logic of social
insurance in order to protect the society from the individual bodies
perceived as a threat. In 1974, the government introduced an income tax
deduction for families with three children and prioritized public housing for
those who underwent a sterilization operation after having two children. In
1982 the government offered priority rights in rural loans, agriculture/fishery
loans and mid- and long-term housing loans to those who received
sterilization operations. Poor families who had a sterilization operation had
their living expenses reimbursed. In 1983 family allowances and student
grants for government employees were not available after the second child
in each family, and medical insurance benefits were only given out up to
the birth of the second child. In 1985 medical clinics affiliated with the
Mother and Child Health Care Center, the Planned Parenthood Federation of
Korea and the Korean Association for Voluntary Sterilization offered the
free delivery of a child when a couple promised not to have children for a
certain period of time(KIPH, 1983: 36-37).
The fact that government support was concentrated on the urban
low-income class and poor families requires special attention. It is based on
a tacit premise that the births of children who cannot receive sufficient
education might increase the anti-social body in an era where the size of the
labor force does not guarantee productivity. Society is threatened by the
growth of a certain anti-social class as well as by total population growth.
Socializing Childbirth: Korea’s Family Planning Program in the 1960s and 1970s 121
The idea is that it is better for individuals and for society as a whole when
the poor do not have children because these off-spring might not grow into
healthy citizens. This concept does not vary widely from the eugenic
perspective that favors the abortion and sterilization of mentally or
physically challenged people. The medical and economic support provided
from this point of view is not based on social ethics or individual rights but
on a strategy to make a statistically optimal society.
Another type of caring power can be found in legal measures. The laws
in this case exist not to exempt or punish but to encourage and improve.
With the launch of the Family Planning Program, the authorities tried to
implement a mother and child health project and create legislation to support
it. Unlike the original meaning of “mother and child health,” in Korea, this
notion began as something subordinate concept to the Family Planning
Program. Efforts to reduce the population could be labeled as mother and
child health because the Mother and Child Health Act guaranteed
governmental budget support for the Family Planning Program and partially
legalized abortion.
The most urgent legal task in carrying out Family Planning Project was
to legalize abortion, banned by Criminal Law. With the Project in full
swing, the Economic Planning Board included measures to legalize abortion
in the Family Planning Project plan drawn up in 1963. The measures,
however, could not go into effect because of a failure to bridge differences
among related government agencies. Rather than in the National Assembly,
dispersed at the time due to the Revitalizing Reform, the abortion matter
was decided in an emergency meeting of the Cabinet, a body which
exercised legislative power. In 1973, the Mother Child Health Act was
passed, and abortion became partially legalized.
The Mother and Child Health Act helped to bring down the childbearing
122 한국사회 제14집 1호(2013년)
age of women. Pregnant women above the age of 35 were classified as
“high-risk pregnancies” and came directly under the mother and child health
project. With this Act in effect, childbearing ages began to concentrate in
the 20-34 age band to account for 96.3% in 1987, up from 72.7% in the
1960s, with pregnant women outside this band in the ages between 20 and
49 dropping sharply from 27.3% to 3.7% in the same period(KIHASA,
1991b: 403). As such, the Mother and Child Health Act was the main
device carried out by Family Planning Program that legalized abortion under
the name of mother and child health.
In addition to legalizing abortion, the Mother and Child Act included the
management of pregnant women and of infants and children. The authorities
issued mother and child health notebooks with the aim of the integral
management of the overall process from pregnancy and delivery to the
health of infants and children. With the distribution of the notebook, clients
of both public healthcare centers and private clinics were registered in a
unified system, making it easier to produce mother and child health-related
statistics. Furthermore, there was an effort to produce a national health
notebook to lead to school health(KIPH, 1988b: 50-52).
An individual’s body is socially coined as a result of the technology of
powers working outside the body. Voluntary participation, however, cannot
be overlooked in the process. Participation is about being transferred to the
object for protection and care. While the Family Planning Program was in
progress, mothers’ associations were launched as private organizations.
Branches of the Family Planning Mothers’ Association opened across the
nation in accordance with results from a pilot project by the Yonsei
University College of Medicine in Goyang. These results showed that the
rate of intra-uterine device and contraceptive pill acceptance was much
higher in municipalities with mothers’ associations than in those without
Socializing Childbirth: Korea’s Family Planning Program in the 1960s and 1970s 123
such associations. The Association built a wide network, utilizing women
active in the women’s department of the National Reconstruction Movement
Headquarters. The main activities of the Association were 1) strengthening
friendship and solidarity among those women active in family planning; 2)
enlightening and persuading those unwilling to do family planning; 3)
serving as a catalyst for mass enlightenment efforts in the respective region;
4) contacting enlightenment agents in the town to receive and distribute
contraceptive pills(Gong, 1981: 55-57). Although there were financial and
compulsory devices in place to build mothers’ associations, those
participating had the belief that as homemakers, mothers, citizens and people
of the nation they were taking part in a project necessary to society.
Lastly, there was the effect created by the combination of the Family
Planning Program with feminism. The goal of the government to persuade
people to have as few children as possible became more powerful when it
met with the feminist discourse that supported the enhancement and
protection of women’s rights. In other words, the economic logic of the
Program that early marriage and many children hampered national
competitiveness had a synergic effect with the feminist discourse that
childbirth and childrearing hindered women’s self-realization.
The view found in the slogan of the Program, “Let’s Not Distinguish
—
Sons from Daughters Let’s Have Only Two Children and Raise Them
Well,” was just right for feminists who were against sexual discrimination.
The partial legalization of abortion, the result of the Family Planning
Program, also confirmed the feminist argument that women were the owners
of their own bodies. Korea’s Family Rights Law stipulated that the head of
the family and property had to be succeeded by sons. The anti-feminist
Family Rights Law could be revised as the Family Planning Program found
it to be the greatest stumbling block in its effort to encourage people to
124 한국사회 제14집 1호(2013년)
have only two children, whether they be sons or daughters.9)
As such, the Program became more powerful when it met with the
discourse supporting women’s rights and the protection of mother and
children. Feminist demands for the abolition of sexual discrimination, the
partial legalization of abortion and the revision of the Family Rights Law
were realized unexpectedly for the health of the social body. As a result,
sex, childbirth and family came out of the arena of nature to be regulated
and managed.
Ⅵ. Conclusion
Park Chung-hee’s administration spearheaded the “protection” of society
after it “occupied” it. It saw a growing population as the greatest threat to
society. Gearing its attention to the size of the population, population
growth rate and the method of regulation, the government began to take
issue over sexual behaviors and childbirth practice. The rise of social
science, which considered population as something related to knowledge and
9) The performance of the Program was scored as follows. 1. The goals of each
contraceptive method vs. performance (60 points) 1) Intra-uterine devices (20
points) = (accumulated performance until the end of given month/yearly
goal)×(given month/12) ×20 2) Sterilization operations (25 points) =
(accumulated performance until the end of given month/yearly goal)×(given
month/12) ×20 3) Condoms and pills (15 points) = Monthly performance/average
monthly goal×15. 2. The contraceptive operation’s excess records (8 points) 1)
Intra-uterine device’s excess records (3 points) 2) Sterilization operation’s excess
records (5 points). 3. Contraceptive operation results by children alive (18
points) 1) Intra-uterine devices (8 points) 2) Sterilization operations (10 points).
4. Program management conditions (14 points) 1) Reporting the date and
accuracy of monthly report (2 points) 2) Field guidance and confirmation of
results (2 points) See KIHASA (1991b), pp.189-190
Socializing Childbirth: Korea’s Family Planning Program in the 1960s and 1970s 125
management, brought about social technologies such as the population
census, social insurance, and social work. Female and male bodies could no
longer remain in the natural or private sphere but needed to become
something for statistics, social science, social hygiene and social work to
develop and health administrators to interfere with.
The argument of a certain period that one should not have many children
is not different from the argument of another period that one should have
many children. Both positions maintain that individuals should be
subjectivated voluntarily or compulsorily in a certain way required by
society. Various technologies were mobilized as devices for subjectivation.
Procedures were not limited to health agents’ crackdowns and discipline in
common spaces such as schools, the military and workplace. Methods also
included medical protection by a mother and child health project, eugenics,
preventive medicine and social support, and inferior symbols associated with
fertility.
The remarkable drop in the total fertility rate from 6 to 2.1 in around two
decades was not just a result of Family Planning Program but also came
about from women’s voluntary participation in promoting their rights and
from overall socioeconomic changes. This study, however, attempts to focus
not on the causes of such changes but on effects: modifications to life order
caused by changes in the area of childbirth. It is necessary to link the
change in the system of managing childbirth, contraception, mother and
child health and family type to the rise of a new modern power, and finally
to review the process by which the technologies employed by the power are
associated with the production of a new human type.
Based on this perspective, this study shows that Korea’s Family Planning
Program was a modern enlightenment project driven by the modern will to
accumulate knowledge and the will to manage under an authoritarian
126 한국사회 제14집 1호(2013년)
military regime. This campaign led to a new type of modern subject who
considered fertility as a disease. Against this backdrop, the horizon of the
Family Planning Program discussion should be expanded to the aspect of
the “irrationality of modernity,” where a society goes beyond its
self-preserving goals of economic growth and reproduction to be captured
by modern governmental technologies.
2013년 4월 26일 접수
2013년 6월 3일 수정 완료
2013년 6월 5일 게재 확정
Socializing Childbirth: Korea’s Family Planning Program in the 1960s and 1970s 127
References
Bae, Eun-Kyung. 2012. Human reproduction in the Korean Modernity.
Seoul: Sigan Yeohaeng (in Korean).
Byun, Hwa-Soon. 1991. “Government Policy and Women". Women Study.
Fall (in Korean).
Economic Planning Board: EPB. 1977. Data on Population Policy (in
Korean).
________. 1981. Comprehensive Measures on Population Growth Control
(in Korean).
________. 1983a. Current Status and Prospects for Korea’s Population (in
Korean).
________. 1983b. The Fifth Five-Year Economic and Social Development
–
Plan Plan on Population (in Korean).
Foucault, Michel. 2003. Society Must Be Defended: Lectures at the Collège
de France, 1975-1976. tr. David Mercy. New York: Picador.
______________. 2009. Security, Territory, Population: Lectures at the
—
Collège de France 1977 1978. tr. Graham Burchell, NewYork:
Palgrave Macmillan.
Gane, M. Johnson, T. 1993. Foucault's New Domains. Routledge.
Gong, Se-Kwon et al. 1981. Korea's Family Planning Program, KIFP (in
Korean).
Hong, Moon-Sik. 1998. “Study on the Effect and Trend of Fertility Control
Policy”. Korea Population Vol.21 No.2 (in Korean).
Horn, D.Gordon. 1993. Social Bodies. Princeton University Press.
Hu, Shiquan. 2010. “New Village Movement of Governance Apply China
Civil Society”. Journal of Social Research Vol.13 No.2 (in Korean).
Kim, EunShil. 1991. “Logic of Development and the Fertility rate of
128 한국사회 제14집 1호(2013년)
Women”. Another Culture Vol.8 (in Korean).
Kim, Mee-Hyun. 1993. Nation-Family Relation Shown in Korea’s Family
Policy. Yonsei University Political Science MA. Thesis (in Korean).
Kim, Myung-Sook. 2008. “National Mobilization and ‘Family Planning’”.
In Gong Je-Wook (ed). Nation and Everyday Life. Seoul: Hanul
Publishing Company (in Korean).
Kim,
Se-Woong
ed.
1976.
Korea’s
Population
Problem
and
Countermeasures. Korea Development Institute (in Korean).
Korea Institute for Family Planning: KIFP. 1971-1980. Family Planning
Chronology (in Korean).
________. 1978. Statistics on Population and Family Planning (in Korean).
________. 1978. Research on the Status of Designated Family Planning
Operation Doctors (in Korean).
________. 1979. Research on the Status of Abortion (in Korean).
________. 1980. Special Analysis Series on Fertility in Korea 1-3 (in
Korean).
Korea Institute for Health and Social Affairs: KIHASA. 1990. Valuations
on the Government Family Planning Program (in Korean).
________. 1991a. Population Policy Formulation for the 2000’s (in
Korean).
—
________. 1991b. Population Policy 30 Years (in Korean).
________. 1992. Family Formation and Childbirth in Korea (in Korean).
________. 1994. Measures to Activate Family Health Project (in Korean).
Korea Institute for Population and Health: KIPH. 1981. Research Report on
the Workplace Family Planning Program Operation (in Korean).
________. 1983. Korea's population problems and countermeasures (in
Korean).
________. 1986a. Report on Reserve Forces Family Planning Conditions
Socializing Childbirth: Korea’s Family Planning Program in the 1960s and 1970s 129
(in Korean).
________. 1986b. Research on the Analysis of Population and Family
Planning in Elementary, Junior High and High School Textbooks (in
Korean).
________. 1988a. Research on the Utilization of Urban Family Planning
Agents (in Korean).
________. 1988b. Research on Mother and Child Health Project
Management (in Korean).
Labor Bureau. 1975. Population and Women Workforce (in Korean).　Lee, Heon-Tae. 1985. “Status of Family Planning Program in the Military
and Direction for Improvement”. Hoguk.. October (in Korean).
Lee, Mee-Kyung. 1989. “National Childbirth Policy”. Collection of
Dissertations on Women’s Studies. Winter (in Korean).
Ministry of Health and Social Affairs. 1981-1986. Health and Social Affairs
Statistics Chronology (in Korean).
_______________________________. 1986. The Plan for Family Health
Project (in Korean).
Planned Parenthood Federation of Korea: PPFK. 1968-1985. Friend of
Family (in Korean).
________. 1971-1985. Chronology (in Korean).
________. 1991. PPFK History of 30 Years (in Korean).
Shin, Geuk-Bum ed. 1976. Population Education. Seoul: Gyoyuk Chulpansa
(in Korean).
Turner, Bryan S. 1997. “From government to risk, some reflection on
Foucault’s contribution to medical sociology”. In Alan Petersen and
Robin Bunton, Foucault, Health and Medicine. London:Routledge.
Usborne, Cornelie. 1992. The Politics of the Body in Weimar Germany.
University of Michigan Press.
130 한국사회 제14집 1호(2013년)
Yang, Jae-Mo. 1984. “Necessity of Family Planning in Business”.
Management Circle. May (in Korean).
Socializing Childbirth: Korea’s Family Planning Program in the 1960s and 1970s 131
출산을 사회화하기 : 1960-70년대 한국의 가족계획사업
손애리
고려대학교 아세아문제연구소 HK연구교수
국문초록
본고는 1960-1970년대 한국에서 행해진 가족계획사업을 연구한다. 먼저 여성
의 신체를 대상으로 한 인구조절정책이라는 가족계획사업에 대한 기존의 관
점을 넘어서 근대적 주체 생산 장치라는 관점을 제시한다. 그리고 인구에 대
한 앎의 의지와 관리의 의지, 보호의 의지가 어떻게 한국의 가족계획사업에
서도 관철되었는지를 살핀다. 구체적으로는 출산을 담당하는 여성의 신체는
국가행정과 의료장치의 관리 하에 놓이고 감시와 입법의 대상으로 설정되었
다는 사실, 개별 인구의 성생활 행태는 과잉출산이라는 비정상을 교정한다는
명목으로 보건요원의 감시망에 포착되고 사회과학자에 의해 통계 데이터로
축적되었다는 사실, 그리고 사업은 경제적 관점에서 출발했지만 여성의 신체
적 건강과 사회적 권리를 보호해야 한다는 여성주의 담론과 결합하면서 추진
동력을 얻었다는 사실을 검토한다. 이런 작업을 통해 본고는 한국의 가족계
획사업은 권위주의적인 군사정부 아래서 근대적인 앎의 의지와 관리의 의지,
보호의 의지가 추동해낸 근대적 계몽프로젝트이며, 이를 통해 새로운 유형의
근대적 주체가 형성되는 과정이었음을 확인한다.
주제어: 가족계획사업, 박정희 정권, 근대성, 근대적 주체, 1960년대