The Establishment and operation of Longjing Medical College - The History of Longjing Medical College as Frontier History: Focusing on its 'Disconnection' and 'Continuity'.

Longjing Medial College, established in Longjing, Yanbian, China on September 12, 1945, existed for about 1 year and 6 months until it was renamed as the Medical Department of Dongbei Junzheng Daxue Jilin Fenxiao in April 1947. However, there are only few records and studies on Longjing Medical College in Yanbian as well as in Korea. In order to fill the gap, this study attempted to restore the history of Longjing Medical College built in Yanbian, China immediately after the liberation. In particular, it analyzed how and why the Longjing Medical College was founded and operated, and which relations the college had with the post-war medical educational institutions, focusing on the 'disconnection' and 'continuity' in the historical sense. Since the establishment of Manchukuo, the Japanese colonial government had made it a major "frontier" and actively promoted the mass migration of Japanese and Koreans. For them, the government also set up three Exploitation Medical Schools in 1940. As a part of these three institutions, Longjing Exploitation Medical School educated more than 150 students by 1945, of which about one third was Korean. After the liberation, the Longjing Educational Alliance decided to pursue the return-movement of the Longjing Exploitation Medical School and took over the institution. On September 12, 1945, Longjing Medical College opened at the school site of Longjing Exploitation Medical School. Longjing Medical College was founded by people who had 'the perspective of Korean nationality' in an atmosphere where the 'ethnicity' of the Koreans exercised considerable power. Nevertheless, in 1946, when the Chinese Civil War began and the Yanbian region became an important base of the Chinese Communist Party, the Party began to expand and strengthen their influences in the region. Accordingly, the operation rights of Longjing Medical College were transferred to the Yanbian Administrative offices of Supervision and Government of Jirinsheng which were the administrative institution by the Chinese Communist Party in turns. In the end, Longjing Medical College was reorganized into the Medical Department of Dongbei Junzheng Daxue Jilin Fenxiao (1947. 3) and the first branch of the Chinese Medical College (1948. 1), a medical education institution focused on nurturing the medical personnel required for the Chinese Civil War. In January 1949, the first branch moved to Harbin, merged with the second branch there, and was transformed into Harbin Medical College. Afterwards, the Yanbian Koreans played a major role to establish Yanbian Medical College in a basis of the teachers and buildings left by the moving-out of the first branch(1948. 10. 1). Now, Yanbian Medical College is the official body of Yanbian University Medical Center. Longjing Medical College, which has such a complicated history, is partially 'disconnected' from the Yanbian medical educational institutions in the post-war era in terms of its possession, operation objective, and academic system. However, many of the early members of the Longjing Medical College were not only teachers and students of the Longjing Exploitation Medical School, but also a few of them continued to teach at the Medical Department of Dongbei Junzheng Daxue Jilin Fenxiao, the first branch of the Chinese Medical College, and Yanbian Medical College. Particularly, several members actively participated in the establishment of each school or in the position of the top leader of the school. Also, all the medical education institutions referred to above used the building and facilities of Longjing Exploitation Medical School until the period of Yanbian Medical College. As such, the history of Longjing Medical College as frontier history, gives us a difficult, but significant question on the meanings of 'disconnection' and 'continuity' in history and their implications.