The Korea Times
Long before the sleek, glass-front clinics of modern Gangnam defined Korea’s medical landscape, a quiet linguistic revolution was unfolding at Jejungwon, the country’s first Western-style hospital. The Korea Heritage Service announced Thursday its intent to designate "Haebuhak" — the first anatomy textbook ever authored in the Korean alphabet, or Hangeul — as a National Registered Cultural Heritage. Published in 1906, the three-volume set marks a definitive break from the classical Chinese-centered scholarship that had dominated the peninsula for centuries. While the elite scholars of the late Joseon Dynasty typically communicated through Chinese characters, the authors of "Haebuhak" sought to democratize Western science by translating it into the vernacular. The text is celebrated less for its novelty and more for its profound linguistic ingenuity. Rather than importing foreign loanwords or relying on abstract Chinese terminology, the authors rendered complex anatomical systems into "pure" Korean. The heart was renamed "yeomtong," and the stomach became "babtong" — literally,
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