About
Serin Lee

I am Serin Lee, a Korean medicine doctor who graduated from Dongguk University College of Korean Medicine. People often arrive with heavy heads, restless nights, and necks that will not turn. Listed one by one, the complaints look separate; followed as a story, they often meet the rhythm of a day. Early in practice I kept asking what it means to be a physician. Time simplified the answer: brighten a darkened expression, and begin trust by helping someone heal.

In Korean medicine school you read old texts and recent papers side by side. At first the gap felt awkward; once I began practicing, I understood that both are necessary languages—the eye that takes in a whole day of a person’s life, and the habit of asking what the evidence actually shows. I learned to practice between the two, and I still try not to lean too far either way.

As a student, the way Korean medicine was misunderstood frustrated me. A film made in that frustration won the grand prize at a national student contest—and taught me almost immediately that saying it is unfair is not enough. What was needed was not a better rebuttal but better evidence.

So the treatments I reached for most often in clinic were the ones whose evidence I most wanted to check myself. The paper I published as first author in Frontiers in Immunology in 2022, on acupuncture in respiratory disease, followed that question. Its conclusion had to state plainly that the evidence was still at the animal-model stage. How far we could honestly go mattered more than whether the answer came out the way I hoped.

What that work left me was posture rather than conclusion: the habit of separating what is certain from what is not yet known. Distinguishing “this will help” from “this we should watch a while longer” in the treatment room comes from the same place. I think that distinction is the most honest thing I can offer a patient.

As a clinic director at Tongin Korean Medicine Clinic, I cared for international patients and took part in efforts to share Korean medicine more widely. I learned then that even the same treatment can feel different depending on the clarity of explanation. Writing clinical manuals with colleagues, and illustrating health books for young readers, was also a way to leave clearer marks for where the hand should go and how care continues at home.

Writing the long-needle and thread-embedding manuals with colleagues came from the same instinct. When you are learning a technique, the frightening part is not that it might fail—it is that the hand might land in the wrong place. So half of each book turned out to be about what not to do. Once safety is written down first, the remaining space can be worked with confidence.

On the health books for young readers I worked as the illustrator. Children are remarkably curious about their bodies and have remarkably few places to ask—about periods, growing pains, sleep, weight. Often it was enough simply to offer accurate information in a tone that carries no shame, and what makes that tone, in the end, is the warmth of a single line.

I have also worked where Korean medicine is practiced outside a clinic: the Jongno senior health promotion project, and the Korean medicine center at the 2023 Saemangeum Jamboree. When the audience and setting change, the length and order of an explanation must change with them. Saying the same thing in several ways has made my clinical language a little more flexible.

I now practice at a clinic in Seoul, and keep notes, columns, and interviews on this page. My near goal is less a grand declaration than a trustworthy language, built in front of patients and readers. I hope that archive becomes groundwork for a future clinic and collaboration.