Theodore Jun Yoo's It's Madness: The Politics of Mental Health in Colonial Korea begins with alarming statistics. While South Korea boasts an enviable developmental trajectory to join the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, the club of the world's wealthiest nations, it has the highest suicide rate among them. Some attribute these stark numbers to the extreme, high-stress environment of South Korea, with intense pressure to attain a narrow definition of success, exacerbated by a decreasing social safety net.
It's Madness illuminates a syncretic history of mental illness in Korea. It is a complex story in which age-old practices co-existed with modern science and medical technologies, throughout an era of tumultuous entry into modernity as a colony. This pioneering study reveals the period of Japanese colonization of Korea (1910–45) as a crucial moment of how mental health came to be categorized, treated, managed, and understood in Korea. It's Madness glimpses...
