242 SOCIAL REFORMprinciples of proper Confucian order by using the leeway provided by the sub-
stitution of wage labor for slavery.To this I would reply that if rites [the Confucian norms of behavior] and laws are
clear, then the difference between superiors and inferiors will be determined as a
matter of course. This is the reason why the [Ming] code [provides for the pun-
ishment of] hired laborers who talk back to the head of a household or who
report any crime committed by the head of a family [to the authorities]. And
criminal penalties even extend to the punishment of those who talk back to or
inform on the heads of families included in the group of relations who owe three
months' mourning [to their deceased relatives]. If laws and teachings are like
this, then there need be no concern about [wage laborers] insulting or lording it
over [their superiors].No sooner had he hinted at the threat of dire retribution in the face of recalci-
trance than he retreated to his more benign posture, assuring his readers, after
all, that force would really not be necessary because there was no mutually (exclu-
sive) contradiction between treating people with benevolent compassion and main-
taining status distinctions. One need not dispense with benevolent compassion
as the means to maintain proper status distinctions because then, "both worthy
and ignorant men will obtain their proper share in society, and superiors and
inferiors will each get what he seeks. Superiors will employ [inferiors] with
benevolence and compassion, while inferiors will also [serve their superiors]
with loyalty and diligence." 134 This was a rather transparent appeal to utility
(obtaining one's proper share) rather than an appeal to an intrinsic moral com-
pulsion to do what was good and right, as if a utilitarian calculation of interest
was the only guarantee of success.
Furthermore, he used a Chinese example to demonstrate that once Chinese
laborers agreed to work for a family, they observed the proprieties. Why?
Because of existing laws and teachings! In other words, teaching could instruct
individuals in what they should do, law would penalize them if they failed to
do it. In China, "even in the case of hired laborers who might later on become
noble and prominent men, if they should happen to meet their old masters
[employers 1, they must still treat them with the utmost respect." I 35 But one could
not be sure from Yu's explanation whether they did so because of conviction
or fear of the cangue.
He had observed that hired laborers (kogong) were treated virtually as the chil-
dren of the employers in farm families, and he had heard that they had been well-
integrated into the family in China. In other words, what he thought of as free
labor was in fact only the partially free labor of seventeenth-century Korea, work-
ers who were still bound by real or fictive kinship bonds and obligations. It was
thus quite logical for him to presume that the replacement of slaves by this mode
of labor would not destroy contemporary principles of social organization.
Having sheathed the sword of retribution, Yu went further and even asserted