CHAPTER II
The Debate over the Military
Training Agency, 1651-82
Since Yu Hyongwon believed that a large force of permanent, professional,
salaried soldiers was a threat to the financial stability of the state because it
imposed a heavy burden on state treasuries, he proposed to convert all military
units to the supposedly independent and self-financing rotating duty soldier/sup-
port taxpayer system described in chapter 10. This meant that he had to change
the method of service and the financing of the Military Training Agency. At the
time it consisted of between six and seven thousand permanent or long-term
duty troops, funded by the Ministry of Taxation or the Military Ration Agency
(Kunhyangch'ong) in combination with peasant support taxpayers in the coun-
tryside. This method of finance differed from the rotating duty soldiers funded
exclusively by tax payments from the supporting taxpayers (pain) of the Royal
Division and other units.
As we have seen from Yu Hyongwon's treatment of specialized royal guard
units, however, despite the traditional wisdom that permanent troops financed
by the state treasury were a threat to the security of the state, he did not believe
that long-term service was necessarily or totally bad; it was the failure to hold
down the number of salaried soldiers that led to difficulties. He illustrated his
point by discussing the Military Training Agency's musketeers stationed in the
capital on a permanent basis. He pointed out that even though there were already
rotating service troops (ponsang-ji-gun) on duty (in the agency) in the capital
during the Imjin War, the situation required the presence of at least some per-
manent soldiers in the capital. In his opinion, the number of these permanent
capital troops and the corresponding burden on support taxpayers had not been
too great because the capital soldiers were under the close supervision of able
civil commissioners (Chejo) of the agency like Yu Songnyong, Yi Hangbok, and
Yi Won' ik. Of course, Yu gave far too much credit to these men for the low num-
bers of Military Training Agency troops; the real reason was death, desertion,
decreased production and tax revenues during the war, and the stigma attached
to serving side-by-side with slaves in the same unit.
In any case, Yu pointed out that during the reign of King Injo after 1623 an
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