Social Work in Busan At Japanese Colonial Period

Abstract

This study examines the history of social work and the status of social facility, and then classifies social work into poverty-preventing social work and cultivating social work. After the opening of a port, Japanese, residents in Busan, worked in various fields of activity such as engineering works, educational works, sanitation and medical care works, military' public peace' counter-anti Japanese activity, and so on. Relief and social works played a prominent part in Japanese social activities, even though they were conducted from the viewpoint of bestowing a favor.<BR> At that time, the kind and range of social work expanded from the work designed in early colonization to poverty-preventing social work and educational social work according to change in the current. After the First World War, economic change like skyrocketing of the commodity prices and housing shortage required work for stabilizing labor and groups under middle class. So, public welfare work put into operation such as a public employment agency, private affairs consultation, a pawnshop, a public market, a public housing, a laborer lodging, and so on. As 1930' s went on, radical variations on ideology needed educational works, which were the upsurging movement of national sentiment, self-rehabilitation, fostering movement of national power, direction on a teenager group, promoting movement of national athletics. The cost of social work was sometimes appropriated from national treasury, provincial expense, and donations but every kind of fund was usually raised from imperial grant and privy purse of Japanese monarch.<BR> Thus, the fact that the contents and stress point of social work varied as the times shows the change in the character of social work, and Japanese put forward 'poverty-prevention' ostensibly, however, we can know that as a matter of fact, they pursued 'cultivation'. Purpose of social work was not a 'poverty-prevention' rather a means to justify ruling Korea as a colony after all.