ROYAL DIVISION MODEL 437the ranks with soldiers of good status. Such a policy would only result in what
Yu euphemistically called "obstruction to affairs both public and private and
harm done by people transgressing their station in life confusing the system."
In other words, mixing slaves with commoners would weaken if not destroy legit-
imate status distinctions and tear apart the social fabric, if not bring on rebel-
lion. This kind of social mixing could not be attempted prior to the abolition of
the slave law itself. Yu apparently tried to achieve this by ordering that the sago
slave soldiers would not serve on rotating shifts of duty but would remain in
their home districts and undergo training there. I 18
This provision may have been one of the most unrealistic and impractical of
all Yu's propositions, for slaves were so numerous and such an important source
of troops for both capital and provincial rotating service units that relegating
them to the duties of a home militia would probably have decimated some of
the main garrisons and increased the pressure placed on officials for recruiting
adult males of good status. He made the proposal because it was important to
him to cater to the status sensibilities of yangban and commoners even if it
affected the strength of the army.
He also provided somewhat less beneficial terms of service for them than for
soldiers of good or commoner status. As mentioned above one slave soldier would
have to serve for every two kyong of land (i.e., one of every two slave house-
hold heads), double the rate of recruitment on commoner peasants. One would
be the main householder and duty soldier, the other the support person. That
meant that the slave soldier on duty would have only one support taxpayer while
the infantrymen and cavalrymen of good status would have three. Slave soldiers
would have to provide their own clothing and horses, but the government would
furnish muskets, saddles, and other equipment for the horses, and armor and
helmets when on expedition. 1 19
Yu was willing to provide some benefits for them by continuing the current
law that allowed total exemption from the personal tribute or slave tax (sin'-
gong) that an official slave had to pay to the government, and a reduction by
one p 'il of cloth of the tribute that a private slave (owed his master?). Nonethe-
less, their burdens were still heavier than peasants of good status who were inde-
pendent owner-cultivators because slaves owed personal tribute to state agencies
or private masters. On the other hand, they may have been no worse off than
commoner tenants whose rental payments were probably equivalent to the slave's
personal tribute.
Although mid-seventeenth century conditions were far different from the period
of crisis during the Japanese invasions, Yu's position was a retreat from the greater
toleration of slaves in the 1590s, despite a more explicit and doctrinaire attack
on slavery in principle than anything seen in the previous generation. He real-
ized that under his scheme, private slaves would still have a harder burden of
service to bear than men of good status, but such inequality would also have to
persist as long and until slavery were abolished. "If you cannot abolish slavery,
and you also have no choice but to require military service from those who are