220 SOCIAL REFORMa greater share of inherited slaves from the family patrimony than was their due,
holding pawned slaves after debts had been repaid, and retaining slaves even
after a government official had ruled against them in a formal lawsuit. Unable
to establish informal rules for control of slaves, the slaveowners turned to the
state to intervene as judicial arbiter, but those who failed to get their way refused
to honor judicial decisions and repeatedly appealed for reversals, inundating the
existingjudiciary and administrative apparatus and necessitating creation of tem-
porary slave adjudication agencies. This process began in 1269 and was repeated
five more times by 1391.^48
The state responded only with temporary agencies for officials felt that dis-
putes over slave property were best left to the private realm because slaves were
so important to the yangban ruling class. In 1468, Yang Songji stated that "Our
country's slave law has a long history, and the sadaebu [scholar-officials] rely
on it for their livelihood .... Slaves are the hand and feet of the sa [scholar-
officialsl."~'J
Unfortunately, legislation did not succeed in clearing up all pending suits and
appeals of past decisions. The situation demanded the wisdom of a Solomon,
and King T'aejong responded by deciding in 1413 that henceforth all disputes
and appeals between slaveowners, would be settled by dividing all slaves in the
possession of the two parties in half; the decision was later amended to division
of just those slaves under dispute.^50 Perhaps not so wisely, however, he also
opened up the opportunity for appeal of past decisions and the number of cases
soon reached the astounding total of 13,000.51
These regulations were not welcomed by all officials or by aggrieved slave-
owners, who pointed out that the decision to divide the disputed slaves in half
had the effect of rewarding those who made false claims of ownership. T'ae-
jong admitted the validity of the complaints about unfair decisions and even rumi-
nated on the possibility of abolishing slavery altogether because slavery
contributed to the subornation of officials and obstruction of justice in general.^52
In 1414 and 1415 the Ministry of Punishment proposed a plan to limit the own-
ership of slaves by individuals, but the limits were so high that they would not
have reduced the number of slaves significantly. The formal proposal would have
placed a limit of 150 slaves for royal relatives of the first (highest) rank, and
130 for officials of the first rank. Commoners would have been allowed 40 male
slaves, but since there was no restriction on the number offemale slaves, Yi Sugan
estimated that a commoner could easily have possessed as many as a hundred
slaves without being in violation of the law. In any case there was too much
opposition to pass the law, and King T'aejong remarked that the process of divided
inheritance would soon reduce the average numbers of slaves even for families
that owned over a thousand. This remark indicated, however, that he was more
concerned with a more balanced distribution of slaves among elite families than
with manumission of the slaves themselves.^53
Although T'aejong set 1417 as the deadline for suits and petitions over slaves,