ESHS/HSS Annual Meeting

At the Dawn of “Modern” Sewerage: The Uncanny Coexistence of New and Traditional Human Waste Management in 1970s Seoul

• In Event: Landscapes of Development: Plural Visions and the Making of State-Building Infrastructures in East Asia

English Abstract

This presentation examines the simultaneous expansion of two seemingly contrasting human waste management systems in 1970s Seoul: “modern” sewage treatment plants that processed wastewater conveyed through the newly built sewer network connected to flush toilets, and human-waste treatment facilities that handled manually collected excreta through “traditional” night-soil collection networks serving waterless vault toilets. Although the construction of sewage treatment plants embodied a vision of transforming Seoul into a “modern city” that would ultimately eliminate the feculent practices of night-soil collection, it is notable that the state simultaneously invested in refining and even reinforcing the traditional system. Authorities redesigned night-soil collection trucks to appear cleaner and less odorous, expanded their fleet, and constructed “modernized” versions of traditional human-waste fermentation tanks that incorporated biochemical principles similar to those used in sewage treatment plants.
Building on this observation, this presentation argues that the introduction of modern sewage infrastructure did not constitute a sudden technological rupture. Rather, it involved a gradual, incremental transition that continued to rely on preexisting infrastructures until new flush toilets and treatment facilities became widespread—a reality achieved only a decade later. Although sewage treatment plants have often been celebrated as the symbolic beginning of Korea’s modern sewerage, the promise of modernization could not be realized at once; the process entailed a transition period in which plural infrastructural worlds, both traditional and new, coexisted. By highlighting this uncanny overlap, this presentation reveals the uneven and nonuniform nature of infrastructural transformation and the understanding of urban sanitation that such hybridity generated.

Author

• Jungha Hwang, UC Irvine