Svenska Röda Korset-sjukhuset i Pusan 1950-58 : En studie av den svenska insatsen med avseende på dess varierande verksamhetsfokus samt generella utveckling

Sammanfattning: The aim of this paper is two-fold. Firstly, it is the production of a historical and chronological narrative describing the development of the Swedish Red Cross Hospital in Pusan during the years 1950-58. Secondly, it is the investigation of the objectives and aspirations of the organisations and institutions involved and how they affected how the hospital developed during the wartime years and up until the inauguration of the Scandinavian educational hospital, the National Medical Centre, in Seoul. Shortly after the outbreak of the Korean War in 1950 Sweden, a neutral nation, offered to send a contingent for the establishment of a 200 bed mobile field hospital which was to be subjected to the command of the Eighth US Army in Korea. In the end a larger semimobile evacuation hospital was set up in Pusan where both UN soldiers and PoWs were treated, and it came to be known as the Swedish Red Cross Hospital. The decrease in and finally the cessation of hostilities in 1953 opened up for treatment of Korean civilian patients and such work was conducted not only at the Swedish hospital but all over Pusan, though initially it was not formally sanctioned by American and UN authorities. Although still a part of the military system in practice it became a stationary civilian hospital in 1954. The Swedish government hoped to create some continuity between the Swedish hospital in Pusan and the Scandinavian project in Seoul and so sponsored the hospital for a few more years. Even after the main hospital closed in 1957 a Swedish paediatrics team vaccinating children for tuberculosis remained in Pusan until the opening of the National Medical Centre.