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This article analyzes the changing hygienic conditions of employees of the Korean National Railways (KNR) during the Japanese colonial period and the KNR authorities’ response to those changes. Under the employment structure of the colonial period, Koreans worked as lower-level laborers in the field, receiving low wages that were half those of Japanese employees. In addition, because they worked mostly as engineers and factory workers, they were at a higher risk of sustaining diseases and injuries while on duty. Nevertheless, the death rates of Japanese employees, who were assigned to the mid- and upper positions in the labor system and received high wages, were actually higher. This is because the Japanese, who often worked indoors and lived communally when off duty, were vulnerable to epidemics of infectious diseases. In response to this paradoxical phenomenon, medical services were provided mostly for the Japanese and expanded to their families as well. In addition, although the benefits of modern medical services and its basis, the mutual relief system, were expanded to the Koreans as well, this was because the Japanese colonial authorities were aware of the usefulness of the Korean laborers as human resources. Premised on the colonial employment structure, modern labor hygiene was thus introduced and established in a distorted form.
