SLAVERY 231moner males who had commoner service and the official slaves who had run
away from their duties or tax obligations, purchased their freedom, or bribed
their way out of registration, But this process took over a century to achieve,
Adoptioll of the Matrilineal Rule in 1669
In the late sixteenth century, even before the Japanese invasions, Yulgok (Yi I),
who was then royal secretary, proposed reaffirmation of the matrilineal rule to
counter the absorption of commoners into powerful families as their slaves and
provide men for military service. His proposal, however, was blocked by an offi-
cial who insisted on the moral superiority of the patrilineal succession ruleY"
Yulgok allowed that while the matrilineal law was superior, it was not being
applied according to law.^9!
The scholar Cho Ik also wrote in the mid-seventeenth century of the short-
age of soldiers caused by an excessively large number of slaves, which he esti-
mated at 80 to 90 percent of the population, an obvious bit of hyperbole to lend
force to his advocacy of the matrilineal rule. Nonetheless, Kim Yongmo has esti-
mated that in the 1680s the slave population hovered around the 50 percent
mark.9^2 He blamed it on the court officials who only thought about protecting
control of their own slaves, and predicted that the whole population would be
converted to slavery if something were not done to reverse the situation.^93
Song SiyOl, the official most responsible for the adoption of the matrilineal
rule in r 669 and a leader of the Westerner faction, was a student of the famous
expert on ritual and Neo-Confucianism, Kim Changsaeng, who had studied with
Yulgok. When Song requested adoption of the matrilineal rule to King Hyi)njong,
he gave credit to Yulgok for the idea, and he attacked the perversion of the matri-
lineal rule by enslaving offspring if either parent were of base status. He knew
that the scholar-officials would raise a row over the loss of their slaves, yet he
still insisted that the matrilineal rule would reverse the increase in the number
of slaves in society.0~
Third State Councilor Hi) Chi)k, a leader ofthe rival Southerner faction, actively
supported Song's proposal. It was not until after exacerbation ofWesternerlSouth-
erner animosity over the mourning rite question in r672 that Hi) changed his
position and was able to persuade King Sukchong to annul the matrilineal rule
in 1675. Thereafterthe matrilineal rule became indelibly linked with the West-
erners and their splinter factions, and opposition to it with the Southerner fac-
tion. It was restored in 1684 and abolished again in r689 when the Southerners
returned to power for the last time. Despite the return to power in r694 of the
Patriarch's Faction (Norem), the Westerner splinter group of Song Siyol disci-
ples, King Sukchong did not reverse his earlier decision and it was not until r 730
that King Yongjo decisively reaffirmed the matrilineal rule.'!) What is signifi-
cant about this sequence of events is that the pressures of foreign invasion did
not lead to the adoption of the matrilineal rule as the means of increasing the