Beyond Medical-Scientific Fix: Searching for a Social Solution for the Humidifier Disinfectant Disaster in Korea

In November 1994, South Korean firm Yugong began selling a humidifier disinfectant on the domestic market that it claimed was “capable of completely eradicating bacteria in humidifiers”. However South Korean government's medical agency officially announced in 2011 that the fatal lung diseases found in some hospitals mainly among children and young mothers were caused by chemical disinfectants used in household humidifiers, marking the start of the humidifier disinfectant disaster in Korea. Over the past twelve years almost 8,000 people have claimed themselves as victims of the disaster, and a medical-scientific approach has been taken by the Korean government in its efforts to solve the problems in terms of relief of and compensation for the potential victims. One of the unintended consequence of this approach has been the fact that the number of "official victims" recognized by the government is quite small compared to the total number of applicants who claim to be suffering from the humidifier disinfectant disaster. This is mainly due to the fact that the medical-scientific approach relies on excessively strict, rigid, and narrow medical-scientific criteria provided by medical experts for judging the degree of applicants' bodily damage from the use of humidifier disinfectants. As a result, this medical-scientific approach is becoming increasingly criticized by patients' organizations mainly composed of rejected applicants. Based on the analysis of the limits of this medical-scientific fix approach and after clarifying the social implications of the disaster from a sociological perspective, this paper proposes certain social approaches focused on participatory governance as a means of sustainable solution to the problem. Finally, the paper emphasizes that the act of taking social responses to the humidifier disinfectant disaster should also be considered a process of enlarging and deepening democracy in Korea.