256 SOCIAL REFORMthat the yangban had only emerged as a distinct social class in the late sixteenth
and early seventeenth centuries. In his eyes it was the decline of the commoner
class to the level of despised persons that was the most serious problem of the
day, not the rise of slaves to the level of commoners.
This attitude emerges clearly in his comparison of contemporary Chinese and
Korean status systems. He pointed out that some Koreans were under the delu-
sion that because the Chinese did not discriminate in favor of hereditary aris-
tocratic status (munbOl), they therefore allowed slaves and the basest of persons
to rise to become high officials and treated them without discrimination
(myongbun). This was mistaken, however, because even though the Chinese paid
no special favor to the descendants of officials, "when it comes to slaves and
low I y base persons, the severity of their respect for status distinction [myonghun J
is on a par with our country; it is doubly strict. So how can you say that China
does not take the requirements of social status [myiinghunJ seriollsly?",81
Yu Suwon was not a conservative defender of the status qllO against change
or reform. On the contrary, he was a critic of hereditary slavery and oppressive
taxation of slaves, but his sympathies for the sufferings of slaves did not encom-
pass a desire for the abolition of slavery or elimination of status-based society.
Reform for him also meant a return to equal opportunity for all men of good
status and reestablishment of a firm line between them and base persons or slaves.
For that matter, he was not a supporter of land reform like Yu Hyongwon, and
he was critical of the more egalitarian aims of the early Choson reformers like
Chong Tojon and Cho Chun.^182
Living in a more commercialized age than Yu Hyongwon, he favored increased
specialization of function among the population and more commercial and indus-
trial activity. He also devoted some space to the problem of wage labor in the
economy, but he did not see it as the wave of the future or the substitute for the
main force of agricultural workers, let alone the other standard occupations. Nev-
ertheless, his discussion of the matter yields some important insights into the
role of wage labor at the time and even the nature ofYu Hyongwon's concept of
the phenomenon in the previous century.
Yu Suwon took as his model for the division of labor in contemporary soci-
ety the nine categories of occupations listed in The Rites of Chou. The eighth
category were the sin and ch up or male and female base persons, respectively.
Yu Suwon defined this type as equivalent to the male and female slaves (nobi),
hired laborers (kogong), and household servants (kach 'uk) of contemporary
Korea. The kogong were the hired laborers that Yu Hyongwon planned to use to
replace slave labor in Korean society. It may seem odd, however. that Yu Suwon
should adopt the ancient Chou conception of wage labor as similar in kind to
slave labor since he was living in a period when the difference between the two
should have been obvious. Although he did distinguish wage labor from slave
labor, he still regarded the kogong as similar to private slaves.
Since Pak Songsu also found that hired laborers in mid-Choson were by no
means the free wage labor of the capitalist West, and that those in the northeast