Conclusion

This chapter has examined the emergence of a new type of herbal pharma­ceutical industry and associated classificatory issues in South Korea. Emerg­ing entities, whether biochemical, genetic modifications, or phytochemical, disrupt existing social order by challenging classificatory systems embedded in regulatory and cultural institutions.^[806] It is also true that the classificatory system is (re)made to fit into the social and policy orders when a novel entity emerges due to advances in science and technology in a national context.

In the South Korean national context, the creation of the legal categories “natural drugs” and “health functional food” has disrupted not only the market order of the pharmaceutical industry but in fact unfolded a complex postco­lonial situation. The industry based on or exploitive of Korean medicine and drugs (han ui yak) has greatly expanded in the past few decades, partly because the South Korean governments have driven to commercialize natural prod­ucts. As an emerging nation state in the global markets, the government has aimed to dominate postcolonial knowledge making and market creation as opposed to being occupied by multinational pharmaceutical companies that are characterized as neo-colonial powers in the global markets. The government’s strong presence in pharmaceuticalization has offered opportunities for small and medium-sized companies to jump into the pharmaceutical industry as long as their business model is based on innovation.