After the late Dr. Ho-Sung Song assumed office as the first President of the Academy, the role and responsibility of organizing the autumn academic conference was passed on to the Academy in 1962. The first academic conference to use the title of ‘Korean Academy of Tuberculosis and Respiratory Disease’ was held on December 1, 1962 at Yonsei University. Twenty lectures including ‘Preventive chemotherapy in children exposed to M. tuberculosis’ were presented and cases were also discussed among the participants.

Since then, academic conferences have been held biannually in spring and autumn. Different provincial cities took turns hosting the spring symposium while the autumn symposium was customarily held in Seoul. As the years passed, the number of presentations increased, and from the 81st Academic Conference in the autumn of 2005, the presentation sessions were extended to 1.5 days, truly demonstrating the advance(or progress) of the academic activities of the KATRD.

The history of the Academy’s medical journal goes back to ‘Tuberculosis’ first published by the Tuberculosis Association in 1954.

Two thousand copies of the first edition of Tuberculosis were printed in 1954. The journal was published one to two times a year until the publishing responsibility was handed over to the Academy in 1962. Since then, three thousand copies were printed and distributed to members, libraries, and relevant organizations including the The International Union against Tuberculosis and Respiratory Disease (IUATRD). Around this time, the title of the journal was changed to ‘Tuberculosis and Respiratory Diseases’.

The number of publications per year increased gradually, and by 1992, the journal was produced every other month, a total of six times a year. To date, ‘Tuberculosis and Respiratory Diseases’ remains as one of the oldest and most celebrated medical journals in Korea. The abstracts of the papers in the journal can also be accessed through the EMBASE (Excerpta Medica).

In addition, seven monthly group discussion sessions have been held in Seoul since 1981 for pulmonologist and other physicians working in the area of tuberculosis, and workshops were organized during academic conferences since the 1991 autumn conference. As of June 2007, 104 academic conferences and a total of 26 workshops have been held.

The Academy also took on the responsibility of conducting various important projects. ‘Tuberculosis and Respiratory Terminologies’ was published in 1990, and ‘National survey of Sarcoidosis in Korea’ was conducted in 1992. The project ‘National Survey of Mycobacterial Disease Other than Tuberculosis in Korea’ was concluded in 1994, ‘National survey of Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome in Korea’ in 1995, ‘National Survey of Open Lung Biopsy and Thoracoscopic Lung Biopsy in Korea’ in 1997, ‘Guideline for Asthma & COPD (Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease), Guideline for Tuberculosis & Pneumonia’ in 2000, and ‘National Survey of COPD in Korea’ in 2002.

In addition, the ‘Lung Day’ was founded in 2003 in order to raise public awareness on the importance of healthy lungs and smoking cessation.