The Development of Medical and Sanitary Systems in the Treaty Port of Incheon

Abstract

This paper aims at the development of medical and sanitary systems in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and their changes in the treaty port of Incheon. Also it examines how these systems influenced the image of the city and their impact on the city itself. Incheon had been a small village before it was opened to the world in 1883, as one of the primary treaty ports in Korea. Over the next two decades, Incheon rapidly developed into a modern city. By the early 1900s, it had become the second largest port in Korea, with a growing population of both Japanese and Korean residents. There was an autonomous community managed by the Japanese Settlement Committee. The first basic sanitary and medical efforts were mostly conducted by the Japanese Settlement Committee. Their work was limited to a small area at the beginning, but gradually applied to wider areas with the expansion of the areas in which Japanese resided. The three residential zones of the general foreign settlers, mostly Japanese, and Koreans were not divided strictly. When the Committee implemented preventive measures against epidemics, they only focused on the health conditions of the Japanese community and did not try to involve Koreans by force. It seems that there were fewer complaints and conflicts than in other Korean cities. Incheon was introduced as a new port/city, and its strengths that were emphasized were mostly related to sanitary conditions. Also, an examination of statistics on infectious diseases in Korea reveals that although Incheon was the second largest port in Korea at the time, with large numbers of people and goods moving in and out, the death and disease rates were not so high. Incheon created an image of a “modern” city by improving its sanitary and medical facilities and it was the example of a “colonial city”.