214 SOCIAL REFORMof Koryo, Wang Kon (877-943, known posthumously as King T'aejo, r. 9 I 8-43).
In 982, Ch'oe Siingno, a renowned Confucian scholar-official, praised T'aejo
for his desire to manumit prisoners of war after the dynasty was founded in 9 I 8
even though he was unable to do so lest he antagonize his leading supporters.^20
As a spokesman for the slaveowning aristocracy he was praising T'aejo 's sagac-
ity in recognizing the legitimacy of slave property while also crediting him with
a measure of compassion for the unfortunate fate of war captives. The Kory6sa
also praised him for redeeming over one thousand persons forced into slavery
by buying them back with cloth and silk from the royal treasury.2I Neverthe-
less, T'aejo made no attempt to abolish slavery, and later generations in a soci-
ety that accepted slavery as legitimate merely admired T'aejo for his display of
mercy. 22
In fact, T'aejo willingly granted slaves to political rivals like Kyonghwon of
later Paekche as an inducement to abandon his old loyalties and join the new
regime.^23 In his last will and testament he also warned his successors against
appointing official slaves to office or allowing them too much influence in the
conduct of affairs because of his distrust of their loyalty.24 He was afraid that
rebels and political opponents who had been enslaved by the state as punish-
ment would pass on their desire for vengeance to their descendants, but this lim-
ited restriction on officeholding by slaves was interpreted by later generations
as a justification for hereditary slavery. In I 158 when the eunuch Chong Ham,
a descendant of a slave who lived in T'aejo's reign, was appointed to office, a
censor objected that it would be contrary to T'aejo's intent if the heirs of those
disloyal to him were so honored while the scions of his loyal followers went
without postS.25
In 1300, when King Ch'ungnyol attempted to block the Mongol demand that
he abolish the current Korean slave laws, he explained that T'aejo's warning
against manumitting slaves was the reason why severe restrictions on slave sta-
tus were incorporated into Koryo law. He pointed out that anyone with a taint
of slavery in his blood for the previous eight generations was prohibited from
holding office; slave status was inherited by children even if only one ofthe par-
ents were a slave; the children of manumitted slaves would remain slaves and
not inherit the "good" or free status of their parents; if the master's family died
out, the slaves would not be manumitted but assigned to someone of the same
lineage?6 These harsh thirteenth-century practices could not have derived sim-
ply from T'aejo's injunction against entrusting official slaves with responsibil-
ity for government affairs, but they were justified by an appeal to his legacy.
T'aejo, the compassionate ruler, had been transformed into a source of legiti-
macy for hereditary slavery.
Ch'De Sungno's Defense of Slave ryBy the end of the tenth century the tension between kings and aristocrats over
the control of wealth and resources that marks so much of the history of tradi-