I. Opening A Pandora’s Box: Baek Shu Oh Disaster

In the early 1990s, the professional organization of Western medicine (or biomedicine)-trained pharmacists, the Korean Pharmaceutical Association, demanded the government integrate Korean medicine into Western biomedi­cine.

When one is sick, there are two types of hospitals that one can visit. One is a (Western) hospital/clinic where the smell of antiseptics hangs in the air and modern medical instruments are installed; the other is a Korean Oriental hospital/clinic where the scent of herb extract is very strong and patients are taking acupuncture lying in the bed. This parallel image of two medical cultures was captured by the Korean Pharmaceutical Associa­tion as a problematic situation, in the sense that Korean consumers were spending on medical and pharmaceutical services way more than they should.

(KPA 1995)¹

About a decade later in 2015, a biotechnology company, Natural Endo­tech, was at the center of public attention because of phytoingredient-based products it had extracted from medicinal plants. Employing novel scientific methods, the firm extracted an herbal compound consisting of three com­monly used medicinal plants, Cynanchum wilfordii, Phlomis umbrosa, and Angelica gigas. The compound was certified by the Korea Food and Drug Administra­tion (KFDA) for use as a functional ingredient with health claims to alleviate

1 KPA (Korean Pharmaceutical Association), Uiryo Ilwonhwa e gwanhan Jaryojip [A Collection on the Unification of Medicine] (Seoul, The Korean Pharmaceutical Association (KPA) 1995).

DOI: 10.4324/9781003271918-18

Classification as a Technology 217 menopausal symptoms. Considering the scarcity of commercial products for middle-aged women, the related products became a market hit in no time. However, the use of such products turned into a nightmare when the Korea Consumer Agency (KCA),^[777] a governmental consumer protection organiza­tion, publicly denounced the authenticity of the products in circulation on the market, contending that authentic Cynanchum wilfordii (baek shu oh) plants were not used. Based on the random sample analysis, the agency alleged that most commercial products were adulterated with morphologically similar i yeop u pi so plants. The agency presented an opinion that the use of i yeop u pi so could pose a public health threat for two reasons. First, reliable scientific evidence was not available to prove that the consumption of the i yeop u pi so plant was safe to human beings. Second, research suggested that i yeop u pi so plants could cause adverse health effects such as hepatotoxicity, weight loss, and nervous breakdown.^[778]

The agency’s exposure horrified the public with the fear that they might have been consuming toxic products, and they demanded an immediate answer from responsible regulatory authorities about the safety of baek shu oh products. However, it took about two years for the Korea Ministry of Food and Drug Safety (MFDS) to conclude that the safety of the products is dependent on the process of how they are prepared. Authentic baek shu oh plants are safe to take only if they are extracted in hot water, whereas they are hazardous to consume if prepared in powder form. The Ministry also asserted that i yeop u pi so plants cannot be used as food or drug ingredients.^[779]

The baek shu oh case provides an entry point for examining the technol­ogy of food governance in South Korea, which is comparable to a Pandora’s box. Until that time, food and drug regulation had been left to the MFDS, and their authority and credibility had remained unscathed.

II.