434 MILITARY REFORMking.^107 If he were interested only in merit and equality, he would not have
included the current restrictions against merchants, artisans, shamans, and
slaves. His purpose was obviously to allow only the elite of his new society, one
that was only slightly less exclusive and hereditary than contemporary Korea,
into his new royal bodyguard. He did the same thing when he opted to retain
the Loyal and Righteous Guards (Ch'ung'uiwi) and the Loyal and Obedient
Guards (Ch'ungsunwi), albeit combined into a single unit.lnR
In the fifteenth century the main purpose of these two guards was to provide
jobs and salaries for sons of kings, princes, merit subjects, and higher civil and
military officials at a time when all adult males were supposed to perform mil-
itary service for the state. Even though these special elite units were designed
to bolster the authority of kings likc T'aejong and Sejong in the early fifteenth
century by providing guaranteed jobs for their political supporters and leading
officials, as time passed, they were viewed as a refuge for the lazy and incom-
petent sons of the yangban. For example, in I445, when King Sejong founded
the Loyal and Obedient Guards, a number of officials complained that so many
sons of the elite were abandoning their studies to sign up for the elite guards to
find an easier path to office than the civil service examinations that the National
Academy had been virtually emptied of students.
For his reformed system Yu defined the Loyal and Righteous Guards as con-
sisting of princes and sons and grandsons of merit subjects (kongsin), and the
Loyal and Obedient Guards as sons of ranked officials and select officers who
either could not get into a school or had been dismissed from school. They were
to supply their own horses and serve on shifts of duty in the capital for two months
at a time. They would receive special benefits in the form of extra land grants
(two kyong) and two support taxpayers as well as rations while on duty, and if
they passed the monthly training tests in first place five times, they would be
appointed to office. When at home off duty, they would have to attend spring
and autumn field training. Nothoi (of yangban) would be allowed into the unit
as a means of eliminating one form of discrimination from contemporary soci-
ety, but the special guard units were themselves a form of discrimination in favor
of a narrow elite. 1Ol)
He did rule out all other special guard units, such as the Loyal Assistant Guards
(Ch'ungch'anwi), the Royal Relative Guards (Chokch'inwi), and the lurchen
Quelling Guards (ChOngnowi), primarily to eliminate superfluous units and
inequalities in duty requirements. Furthermore, the lurchen Quelling Guards,
which were not even listed in the dynastic law code of I474, had become a haven
for men seeking to evade military service. The origin of these guards stemmed
from two abortive attempts in J 457 and 1480 to form a guard unit of "idle" men
from well-to-do families who had evaded service. The two abortive units were
called the Tiger Wing Guards (Hoigwi) and the lurchen Pacifying Guards
(p'yongnowi). Then the Jurchen Quelling Guards (Chongnowi) were established
in 1512 just after the Three Port Uprising Cmmp'o waeran) of Japanese resi-
dents in Korea in 1510, as part of a plan to build up defenses in the north against