In the latter half of the Joseon(朝鮮) Dynasty, the medical world was encountering a great change. It is said that a large stream between the first half and the latter half of the Joseon Dynasty was a qualitative transition from official relationships to private relationships, that is, from adjustments by governmental power to contractual relationships between individuals. Doctors who can be said to be the core of the medical world became to be left in severer competition. The fact that the number of people engaged in medical practice increased to the extent that doctors had to compete with each other implies that not only demand for medical care was increasing but also that medical care was becoming social service that must be shared by all people in the Joseon Dynasty rather than by small numbers of men of power.
Anyway, it seems like that, in the competition that was becoming fiercer, they tried to establish their authority in diverse methods unlike before. As an authority to determine the social positions of doctors in the latter half of the Joseon Dynasty, the government was still occupying an important position, but doctors tried to show off their medical techniques utilizing excellent teachers or books. Meanwhile, they were making efforts to improve treating skills and thereby they were contributing to the development of medical techniques although they were sometimes criticised because of radical treatment or fierce drugs.
In this process, it seems like that some doctors made efforts to establish the social meaning of medicine and their identity. In the short dialogue with Hong Yangho(洪良浩), Cho Gwangil(趙光一) was presenting the image of doctors as active and subjective beings. Pointing out the fact that in the society where feudal position systems were still impregnable, even the Confucian scholars who could be considered as a leading group could not but be passive in front of the sovereign power, he emphasized the fact that doctors could practice treatment as they liked. In that he re-discovered the meaning of treating people’s diseases as a professional intellectual and that he was forming a subjective sense that medical techniques are active self expression, it can be carefully said that Cho Gwangil was obtaining his identity as a doctor. In the society in the Joseon Dynasty where the position systems were still valid and the value system under Neo-confucianism(性理學) supporting the system was impregnable, this change can be thought to be small yet quite meaningful.