ROYAL DIVISION MODEL 433
planned to recruit members of this unit by special military examinations, he also
excluded from participation in these examinations the following categories: the
sons of artisans, merchants, [the denizens of] the wells and marketplaces [ofthe
cities], shamans and other miscellaneous occupations, all official and private
slaves, criminals subject to punishments of transportation or worse penalties,
officials dismissed and sent home under some onus of malfeasance, and all unreg-
istered individuals. Candidates would also need a guarantee from two men, either
a court official or degree-holder living in the countryside, or a local petty offi-
cial or functionary in the community compact association (hyangyak), to affirm
that the man had always been righteous in action and never committed a crime
or violated a regulation of the local oath association. IDS
If the examination system was such a terrible institution (as Yu had argued
elsewhere), however, why preserve it at all, and if at all, why restrict its use to
the king's bodyguard? King T'aejong founded the Inner [Palace] Forbidden
Guards in 1407 as one of several royal guard units designed to augment his power.
Although he recruited them primarily on the basis of military talent, he did not
require them to pass the higher military examination (mukwa) because he was
more interested in their political loyalty than their skills. He also rejected the
attempt of civil officials to impose pedigree and status qualifications on these
guards, and he continued to give preference to the sons of local gentry from the
royal family's home province of Hamgil (Hamgyong) rather than young yang-
ban from the capital. Later in the century, lurchen tribesmen in the north were
also recruited into the guards, no doubt because they were more reliable than
the sons of the politicized and contentious officials in the capital.
It was only after T'aejong's death that the Ministry of War bureaucrats were
able to introduce military skill examinations in archery as a criterion for recruit-
ment. Although the emphasis on military talent continued into the 1430s, skill
examinations were tempered with calculations of time-in-grade as a basis for
promotion. King Sejong also allowed recruitment of sons of yangban officials
of middle or lower rank into the Inner [Palace] Forbidden Guards.
King Sejo, who usurped the throne from his nephew, King Tanjong, and sought
to strengthen his bodyguard against disgruntled loyalists, detached the Inner
[Palace] Forbidden Guards from the Five Guard organization in 1457 and had
it report directly to him. Abolished during the Imjin War, it was restored in 1601
and joined with the Concurrent Royal Stables and Winged Forest Guards to be
one of three royal bodyguard units. Its troops were permanent, salaried soldiers.
By the late fifteenth century, administration of the military admission exami-
nations became lax and in 1507, an official complained that the quality of the
guard had fallen off and most of its men were sons of commoners. 106
Since the Inner [Palace] Forbidden Guards were a manifestation ofthe desire
of strong kings like T'aejong and Sejo to strengthen royal power at the expense
of yangban, bureaucrats, and political opponents, a reduction of the royal guard
and the adoption of impersonal examinations to govern recruitment such as Yu
Hyongwon proposed represented a bureaucratic attempt to impose limits on the