Korea's 1902 cholera epidemic

Outside the East Gate circa 1900s Robert Neff Collection

By Robert Neff

According to William Franklin Sands, an American adviser to the Korean government, the great cholera epidemic of 1902 struck Korea in the late summer without warning. Years later, Sands recalled:

"One morning forty men were dead in a cell of the central prison. The cell was built for twelve, but forty-eight had been crowded in. The jail was built on the main sewer canal and drained into it. Women washed their food and washed their clothes in the canal and threw their refuse there. At night countrymen came in to carry off loads of the black muck to spread on the market gardens and raise the cucumbers and melons that everybody ate in the streets. There was no doubt that an epidemic must spread from the prison to the town."

Actually, Sands wasn't quite accurate in his account. The disease had been reported throughout the country ― especially near the Chinese border ― long before the outbreak in Seoul. The small communities ― far from the view of the emperor ― were forced, at least in the beginning, to fend for themselves.

It was a desperate situation and people took whatever measures they could to protect themselves ― even supernatural defenses. While traveling through the mountainous region of Gangwon Province, American missionary Herman Otto Theodore Burkwall encountered a rope stretched across the road leading to a bridge. The rope had a number of pendants or charms hanging from it and was designed to keep "cholera imps" from entering the nearby village. It isn't clear how successful the impromptu barrier proved to be for the village but apparently, it failed in nearby Gangneung City. When Burkwall arrived there, he found the population suffering horribly from the terrible disease. Throughout the night, the city's residents fired their guns into the air in hopes of scaring off the "cholera devils" ― the constant shooting did manage to scare away the missionary.

Burkwall also described cholera in the southern part of the peninsula. He recalled encountering "a number of dead bodies lying beside the road," rotting in the heat and "the stench was most offensive." At dusk in a nearby city, he "met a crowd of people marching through the streets with an enormous straw rope, carried on the shoulders of men and boys. Hundreds of lanterns and banners were flashing and swaying in the air and a continuous shout, a cross between a song and a groan, went up from the multitude." He was informed later that it was a ceremony to drive out the cholera imps that were decimating the city's population.

Streets and ditches of Seoul in the early 1900s Robert Neff Collection

Burkwall later wrote: "It was rather pathetic to see these people exerting themselves so strongly, but so vainly, to curb the epidemic. They did not sit still and say 'what will be will be,' but, according to the best light they had, they went to work to fight the plague."

American missionaries were not the only ones who provided anecdotes of superstitious countermeasures. Yun Chi-ho, the governor of Wonsan, described a large public ceremony in which shamans offered prayers and rice cakes in hopes "the Honorable Spirit of Epidemic" would leave the city. Yun reported seeing "a procession headed by gongs, drums, trumpets and banners with sorceresses attired in military dresses, so-called, and mounted on ponies [traveling] through the main streets of the town to purify it." The people assured Yun that the city was now safe from the disease. They were wrong. Rumors circulated in nearby towns that thousands in the city had died from the disease and policemen would decapitate any sufferer they encountered who cried out. Yun dismissed these rumors and added that "there is no arguing against superstition."

Many desperate people sought aid from the Western missionaries. The missionaries promptly denounced the superstitious beliefs that the cholera scourge had been sent by evil spirits as punishment and insisted that it was "little insects that get into the water" and then enter into the body and destroy it from within.

'Cleanliness is next to godliness' was extolled but Yun Chi-ho declared, "The un-intelligible jargon of a sorceress has infinitely more weight with the Korean than a whole library on [hygiene]."

Even amongst the missionaries, there were conflicting views. An old French priest declared "no one who kept a nicotine solution in his mouth could possibly catch the cholera germ." He went about his flock and "taught them to chew tobacco, although many [American] missionaries were trying to abolish tobacco among their Christians. He had no cure to offer, but simply talked to them, sat with them, held dying men in his arms and soothed their relatives, but he had a wonderful influence."

A Korean jail in the 1880s Robert Neff Collection

Sands recalled being approached by an elderly woman who begged him to save her husband from the disease. He followed the woman to her residence and discovered her husband's rotting corpse ― he had been dead for about a week. The American sadly informed her it was too late but she was insistent that American medicine would revive him. Her faith was misplaced, for even the missionaries were not immune to cholera's deadly touch.

A French priest in Fusan (modern Busan) displayed symptoms of the disease and went to the home of a Protestant missionary doctor in the city, but rather than actually see the doctor, he "spent two hours walking up and down the verandah evidently suffering greatly but not seeming to desire any help." He then left the doctor's house ― untreated ― and died while walking back to his own home.

Diplomats also suffered. Horace N. Allen, the American minister to Korea, recalled seeing the foreign interpreter of the Russian Legation on the train from Jemulpo (modern Incheon) to Seoul at 5 p.m. ― apparently in good health ― but within 12 hours the interpreter was dead from the disease.

The Korean government, alarmed at the increasing number of fatalities, was forced to take heroic but draconian measures. In the capital, disinfectant crews were dispatched to clean homes, prisons and sewers. Police provided disinfectants and medicine to the poor. The palace provided funds to bury the dead and many people were compelled to receive experimental vaccinations provided generously by the Japanese consul.

Sands' description of the vaccination is chilling. "It had to be administered in the small of the back in a quantity that took an instrument as big as a garden syringe. Nobody would touch it unless I tried it first, so I submitted and it ruined me. I was feverish for weeks and so sore and lame that I could hardly mount or sit my horse."

After Sands survived his encounter with the vaccination, it was given to workers assigned to the quarantine centers, police and messengers of the communications department and its officials. According to Sands, "Of those thus vaccinated none took the sickness."

A street in Wonsan circa 1900s Robert Neff Collection

Perhaps more frightening than the vaccinations were the quarantine centers ― Sands called them "concentration camps." When a cholera victim was discovered, their house ― as well as their personal goods ― were disinfected (frequently burned). The residents within the house ― whether they displayed symptoms of the disease or not ― were taken to one of three quarantine centers. Sands carefully noted that those removed to the centers were only "the poor people and helpless. The rich would not budge nor admit" the disinfection teams.

In the centers, Sands gave the poor victims a concoction of sulfuric acid and lemonade. The epidemic came in waves ― flaring up and then slackening quickly ― and many thousands died. It took its toll upon Sands.

"Cholera is not a pleasant thing to watch. It is evidently more than ordinarily painful. I felt so badly about my patients and victims that I spent a good deal of my time with them, knowing that I was quite helpless but at least keeping up an appearance of helping them; for they were pathetically trustful, and in the guarded camps caused no trouble at all and always welcomed me…"

Every day, after completing his rounds of the camps, Sands would return home, strip off all of his clothes and take a complete disinfectant bath before going into his house. The food he ate was selected carefully and measures were taken to ensure that flies and other pests could not contaminate it. Sands summed up these precautions as "part of life" and "one got used to them."

Fortunately, as the weather grew colder, the cholera epidemic waned. Life returned to normal ― at least in the southern part of the peninsula. However, in the north (near the Chinese border), a new menace appeared ― the pneumonic plague. Sands described it as worse than the cholera epidemic, characterized by its "swift disintegration of the lungs." It was extremely contagious and no one knew what precautions to take against this "Manchurian plague." This new disease "really terrified us," he admitted, but "fortunately it never got as far south as Seoul." However, he added, "those who had to be in the north in winter were not happy."

Robert Neff has authored and co-authored several books, including Letters from Joseon, Korea Through Western Eyes and Brief Encounters.