ABSTRACT
Seoul City’s list of sanitary instructions was a guide not only for the creation of a clean and safe public domain but also for the cultivation of the healthy productive citizens essential to the modern industrial society. Regarding sanitation as a moral issue transferred the hygienic matter from the public sector to the private sector, which led citizens to internalise the ideas. Moral education prevailed throughout the Japanese colonial period but the purpose of the discipline shifted from fostering patriotic citizens who could protect the Korean Empire from imperialistic threats to raising colonial citizens, i.e. sub-Japanese compatriots who could facilitate the foundation of the Japanese Empire. The management of the citizens’ physical and mental health and its link to the nation’s economic growth and security effectively served to buttress the governing power of the military regimes. The history of control over ragpickers began with the national/municipal governments’ thorough control over the vagrant-homeless-ragpickers.
