NEW SCHOOLS 173examination quotas favored residents of the capital over the countryside and
the southern agricultural heartland over the north and northwest frontier.
By changing district or regional quotas to allow more opportunities for
provincial scholars, Yu hoped to offer an inducement for present residents of
the capital to return to their home districts. He referred to these people as "float-
ing guests" or wandering migrants and attributed their existence to private bias
in the current recruitment process, so that "as a result the officials are all peo-
ple from the capital area." 1 1
Noting that discrimination against residents of the north was prevalent in Korea
as well as China, he proposed the use of quotas to redress the imbalance. He
cited as a precedent the Chou dynasty practice of allotting quotas of scholars
that the feudal lords could recommend to the throne to vary by the size of the
feudal domain, "three from a large state, two from a medium, and one from a
small." 1 2 The recommendation system in Han times also contained graded and
fixed quotas based on population, and the Han "examinations of filial and hon-
est men" (hsiao-lien k'ua) provided that "one man be recommended for every
200,000 people in a given area."13 Yu modified this by reducing the ratio to one
recommendee for every 20,000 to 50,000 people. The final figure would be deter-
mined after a thorough investigation of the census registers. Pending that, offi-
cials could use the present local examination quotas. 14
He hoped to redraw district and prefectural boundaries to conform to land
area in place of the current system of grading administrative districts according
to strategic location or other considerations. Under his proposed system 40,000
kyang (4 million myo, the Chinese mou) would constitute a taebu or tohobu (large
prefecture), 30,000 kyang would define a pu (prefecture), 20,000 kyang a kun
(large district), IO,OOO kyang a hyan (district), and the quota of recommended
students would vary according to these units and the population. 1 5 Readjusting
the quota for promoted scholars to the population of his revised district bound-
aries would solve the problem of regional discrimination.
He also believed that the disparities in opportunities for education and recruit-
ment could not be dissociated from the question of the distribution of wealth,
which fundamentally was a problem of land distribution. At the present time
the people of some regions prospered while others were on the verge of eco-
nomic disaster; the breakdown of the land system and the skewing of landown-
ership patterns had exacerbated the difference between the strong and the weak.
In the face of these circumstances, even the establishment of schools and improve-
ment of the quality of teachers would have little effect. 16
Yu, however, was not willing to overturn the present system at a single stroke
to benefit the northwest because it might impose too great a hardship on the
scholars of the capital. As a temporary adjustment, he allowed that his proposed
quotas for the northern frontier territories might be reduced and the capital quo-
tas expanded to accommodate the present imbalance. After some time passed,
if the capital scholars had not returned to their provincial homes in sufficient
numbers, he was willing to permit a permanent extra quota for the capital. This,