Sanitizing Korea : Anti-Cholera Activities of the Police in Early Colonial Korea

Abstract

The Gabo Reform cabinet in 1894 instituted the sanitary police system. With no cure or vaccine for epidemics available and few Western-trained doctors, the task of implementing disinfection and quarantine had to be taken up by the police. However, the sanitary police active in late Joseon Korea worked under civilian supervision. After the Protectorate Treaty of 1905, Japan changed the sanitary police system in Korea, reinforcing the role and the responsibility of the police. Unlike the Korean government, the colonial authority saw police enforcement as the mainstay of administrative implementation. The police-centered sanitizing system was fully established in 1911 when the full responsibility for sanitation work was transferred to the police. Whenever cholera raged through Korea, one of the first measures the Japanese colonial government took was to inspect sea vessels and trains. It was the police who were sent to examine the vessels and crews and also to see to the implementation of quarantine. Vaccination was regarded as the most effective preventive measure and the police controlled all aspects of vaccination campaigns. The most critical mission the police were assigned to carry out was house inspection. The police-centered anti-cholera activities seemed to work. With the exception of the years 1919, 1920 and 1926, colonial Korea did not see as many casualties from cholera as Japan did during the same period. However, the anti-cholera activities carried out by the police often encountered a hostile response from the people. Some expressed doubts about the police-centered anti-epidemic activities, arguing that the colonial government should provide sanitation education, not forced sanitation. But the key aspects of the police-centered sanitary system did not change. The successive budget cuts, together with the colonial government’s desire to control its subjects, prevented the rise of an adequate sanitary infrastructure, and led to the colonizers’ continued reliance on the sanitary police system.