ROYAL DIVISION MODEL 435a possible invasion. Examinations were held to recruit I ,000 sons of ranked offi-
cials unregistered for military service (hallyang) into the lurchen Quelling
Guards, which was assigned to the Concurrent Royal Stable (Kyomsabok). As
an inducement to enlistment, the best of the new recruits were allowed to trans-
fer into the Concurrent Royal Stable and Winged Forest Guards, but only after
first serving in the new unit. By I5I3, however, complaints were already being
made that the lurchen Quelling Guards was tantamount to a sinecure for young
yangban seeking to avoid military service. 110
By proposing the abolition of the lurchen Quelling Guards, Yu was eliminating
one opportunity for sons of yangban to evade or lessen service, but he contra-
dicted this purpose by tolerating the existence of the Loyal and Righteous or
Loyal and Obedient Guards, probably to assuage potential opponents within the
current yangban class and to provide them some benefits of rank and status. He
also hoped to impose a check on the king by creating a royal bodyguard con-
sisting of the Inner [Palace] Forbidden Guards recruited by examination and the
special Loyal Guards recruited from the elite. In other words, these units would
have greater loyalty to their own elite class than to the king, a principle he could
not articulate clearly and directly without risk of lese-majeste.
Military Service for SlavesThe best example ofYu's modification of the egalitarian well-field ideal in the
face of contemporary Korean social reality is to be found in his handling of slaves
in his military service reforms. As discussed previously, there could possibly be
no starker contrast than that between Yu's explicit distaste for the institution of
slavery in theory and his various accommodations to slavery in practice. In this
chapter as well, he spared nothing in condemning the injustice of the institution.
It was all right, Yu remarked, to enslave individuals for the commission of a crime,
but it was unjust for this punishment to extend to their innocent descendants. Slaves
were just as much "Heaven's people" as anyone else, and yet their masters who
might be ignorant and base persons inferior to their own slaves in moral worth
and talent were empowered to use their labor and even determine whether they
lived or died. "How could this be the way of justice in the world?" he implored.
To be sure, he proposed solutions for slavery, but all were gradual. I I I Yu thus
had to provide for some modification in the ideal system of universal commoner
service during the period of transition. He retained the current category of sag 0-
gun or sago soldiers, which by the mid-seventeenth century had included a large
component of slaves, but he had to defend this policy against the opponents of
change. He called these opponents obscurantists "who only thought of their own
private interest and gave no consideration to the needs of the country." I 12
He argued that slaves had to be taken from the clutches of their masters to
help in the defense of the nation and alleviate the burdens on the commoner
peasants. The problem for Korea was that it was a small country with a small
population to begin with, made smaller still by its social system.