398 MILITARY REFORMtheir jurisdiction to supervise training in military skills. He guaranteed thema
tour of duty of twenty-four months to prevent interruption of their work, pro-
moted those with demonstrated military capabilities, and dismissed a number
of military officials who had neglected their duties. In one case in 1655 he exe-
cuted a military officer who objected to a sudden military inspection on the
grounds it was a violation of military regulations.^8 He also established a Mili-
tary Academy (Nungmaach'ong) in 1655 at the recommendation ofYi Sibaek
to train young officers truly able to command men in battle situations.^9
King Hyojong also succeeded in providing financial support and tax exemp-
tions to slave troops of saga units despite the opposition of some of his offi-
cials. In 1654, he ordered the payment of travel expenses for official and private
slaves from Kyongsang Province service in the Royal Division, but instead of
financing this from the state treasury, he levied a support tax of 7 mal of rice on
over 28,000 other slaves who had no military service obligations. He ignored
Kim Yuk's protest that the extra tax to finance this would be too oppressive for
slaves already overburdened with obligations.
In 1656 he stepped up the training and inspection of all saga troops in the
three southern provinces in shooting firearms but allowed as compensation an
exemption from the land tax on one-half kyol of their holdings and other types
of labor service requirements. IO This was a decent arrangement, but he had to
postpone the decision until 1657 when a number of high civil officials includ-
ing Song Siyol and Kim Yuk protested the special tax exemption because it would
cost the state too much lost revenue even though only 20,000 kyol of land of a
total of 500,000 kyol in the southern three provinces would be exempted. After
eventually winning over the chief and second state councilors to his side he
ordered the land tax exemption. II
Hyojong's performance on this question was mixed. The extra tax on slaves
to finance the travel for some on military duty was not that beneficial for the
slaves, but the reduction in their land tax was. In any case, his primary objec-
tive was not to alleviate slave service, but to get the most he could from the slaves
and improve their training as soldiers. Overall, Hyojong made some progress
in improving the military, but he was limited by Manchu suspicions and his own
reluctance to engineer more positive systemic reforms.
Yu's ANALYSIS OF MILITARY WEAKNESSES
Despite the creation of new military units, the army still suffered from a chronic
shortage of troops because of under-registration of eligible adult males, exemp-
tion from duty of the yangban, and the loss of population from the effects of
war, but the problem was not limited to these factors alone. Because more and
more commoners sought to evade service by whatever means they could find,
the government found it difficult to maintain the number of duty soldiers and
support taxpayers (pain).
The post-Imjin situation, however, differed markedly from the pre-Imjin period