전시체제기 조선총독부 농약정책과 도열병 구제의 파행

Abstract

This study examines the pesticide policy of the Japanese Government- General of Korea during the Wartime Regime. It further analyzes the limitations in its efforts to exterminate Rice Blast, as well as the subsequent results. During the 1930s, chemical fertilizers were highly concentrated in nitrogen yet lacked potassium, which led to the spread of Rice Blast. Thus arose the need for active measures such as seed disinfection and chemical spraying. Seed disinfection and chemical spraying were implemented as an attempt to exterminate the pathogen itself, taking a step further from simple “preventive” or “hygienic” measures. Faced with difficulties in potassium fertilizer imports from 1937 to 1938, Colonial Korea witnessed an outbreak of Rice Blast from July to August 1938. Based on the discussions that took place among the “Commission on the Investigation of Countermeasures for the Current Situation” in September 1938, along with the “Roundtable on the Study of Rice Blast Control” in November 1938, the Japanese Government-General of Korea implemented the “Plan for Increasing Korean Rice Production,” which included the extermination of Rice Blast. According to the Plan for Increasing Korean Rice Production, villages, irrigation associations, and farms became the main operating units, and the plan provided assistance in expanding leadership, seed disinfection, and chemical spraying. The plan gradually incorporated Colonial Korea’s agriculture into a commodity market for Japanese agrochemical corporations. However, with mobilization of wartime supplies, obstacles arose in pesticide production, naturally increasing the price of pesticides. This went on to deplete the management resources of farmers. Furthermore, under the mobilization of wartime supplies, the communal efforts of each village unit to eradicate Rice Blast posed a greater burden in labor, thus becoming more favorable for large farmers rather than small farmers. This led many peasant farmers to desert the rural areas.