462 History Series: When Resistance Strengthens Tradition • James Flowers

Medicine is never only about treatment. It also carries culture, identity, and memory. Sometimes preserving a medicine is a way of preserving a people.In this episode we visit with James Flowers to explore a potent moment in the history of Korean medicine and how Hanbang became part of Korea’s cultural resistance during the Japanese colonization. Not through politics or violence, but through preserving ways of healing, thinking, and living.We discuss how medical ideas moved between Korea, China, and Japan, the role of Yangsheng in everyday life, and how Korean medicine resisted separating mind from body in the way modern systems often do.This conversation also touches on the deeper question of how medicine lives within culture—not only through practitioners and institutions, but through families, daily habits, stories, and collective memory.Listen into this conversation that weaves together history, medicine, identity, and the enduring cultural force of East Asian healing traditions.