1946년 충청도 지역 콜레라 발병·확산과 근대 철도 교통 체계

Abstract

On May 20th, 1946, one ex-Japanese Korean soldier who was repatriated to Korea in 1946 was confirmed as a cholera case in Taechŏn, Ch’ungch’ŏng area. His case shows that the 1946 cholera pandemic had as its historical context the Asian-Pacific War which had been ended one year earlier, evidencing the relationship between the pandemic and the war. At the same time, it suggests that the pandemic was closely related to the modern railroad system in that contemporarily Taech’ŏn worked as one of the national centers on the South Korean railway network. The relation between the pandemic and the railway system is confirmed also by other cases in Ch’ungch’ŏng area. What deserves our attention is the case in Choch’iwŏn jurisdictionally under South Ch’ungchŏng Province. The town which worked as one of the local railway centers in Ch’ungch’ŏng area witnessed the outbreak of the early cholera pandemic. Interestingly, in no time, there broke out the cholera in Ŭmsŏng which, connected to Choch’iwŏn by railroad, came to be recorded as the first case in North Ch’ungch’ŏng Province. All these cases suggest that the railway system promoted the local spreading of the pandemic as well as the nation-wide spreading. The cases in Ch’ungch’ŏng area show that the areas along the railway were the local centers of the pandemic outbreaks in Ch’ungch’ŏng area. Also they suggests that modern railway system, national or local, served the spreading of the 1946 cholera pandemic in South Korea. Given this, the 1946 pandemic is said to have been one of the effects of colonial industrialization and modernization on post-colonial South Korea and, at the same time, one expression of Korean modernity. This constitutes the implication of the study of the 1946 cholera pandemic in Ch’ungch’ŏng area.