본문 바로가기
  • Home

The Activities of Preventive Measures against Cholera in 1919‧20 in Colonial Korea

  • The Review of Korean History
  • 2011, (101), pp.205-240
  • Publisher : The Historical Society Of Korea
  • Research Area : Humanities > History

Baek Seon Lye 1

1

Accredited

ABSTRACT

This study focuses on how preventive measures against cholera epidemic by the authorities was conducted and examines how Koreans reacted to them. My aim is to expose various features found between the colonizer and the colonized. Cholera, which had spread to Chosŏn, infected 16,915 people (the deads 11,533) in 1919, 24,229 people (the deads 13,568) in 1920. When cholera broke out near the Chosŏn, the authorities started all sort of quarantine. After cholera was brought into the Chosŏn, the authorities made the greater efforts to search for cases of infectious disease. And Preventive injections against cholera were enforced in all parts of Chosŏn. People were imposed of constraints by the quarantine. People was not able to move freely in and out of country. Several limits and controls were followed in the place where cases were found, and it infiltrated deep into there every day life. The majority of Koreans had fully depended on existing norms and old customs about infectious disease. It made Koreans to conflict frequently with the authorities. As a result, the policemen's attitude was increasingly heavy-handed, and Koreans resisted it. Most of Koreans were reluctant to be hospitalized in the isolation hospitals because of the poor medical treatment, and tried to build their own isolation hospitals. And the local notables and youths organized prevention of epidemic associations. They were welcomed by local people and met with better results more than the authorities. Cholera was a terror and a common enemy to both Korean and Japanese. Therefore, everyone who lived in Chosŏn had the same purpose, the eradication of cholera. The authorities suffered frequent conflicts with Koreans, although they started all sort of preventive measures against cholera. On the one hand Koreans struggled against the prevention of epidemics by the authorities, they tried to organize their own associations, and establish the private isolation hospitals, on the other hand. Preventive measures against cholera by the authorities and Korean's reactions in 1919 and 1920 showed that the authorities and people affected each other. This point exposed the other side of colonial rule that was difficult to explain through one-sided rule by the colonizer and resistance or adaptation by the colonized.

Citation status

* References for papers published after 2023 are currently being built.