CONFUCIAN STATECRAFT 37China. Han Yang'u attempted to refute this assertion by arguing that Yang was
only expressing an ideal condition, not a description of reality, but Yang specif-
ically argued that if there had been a few more yangban in Hamgil (i.e., Ham-
gyang) Province, as in the south, there would have been enough loyalty to throne
and court in that province to have prevented the emergence of the Yi Siae rebel-
lion - a good indication that he was indeed thinking of the real world. Further-
more, he thought that the virtual lifeblood of the yangban (in his own lime) and
the very reason for their own existence was their possession of slaves, but because
there were so few private slaves in the north, there was also a crucial dearth of
yangban as well.3D It was obvious that Yang thought that the yangban included
people of far broader qualifications than office or academic degrees.
Song's opponents have argued that this argument was meaningless in prov-
ing the separate existence of a hereditary yangban status group because anyone,
including commoners and slaves, could own slaves, but most statistical studies
of the late Choson dynasty, such as those by Shikata Hiroshi and Kim Yongsop
(see chaps. 6 and 9), show that yangban almost always owned more slaves than
other status groups, and sometimes in large numbers.
Song also argued that although the honor ofthe male line of the yangban fam-
ily was the most important factor in establishing its prestige, the power and posi-
tion of the families of wives and mothers were also vital to a yangban family as
well, a continuation ofthe bilateral marriage patterns and kinship relationships
of the Koryo period. Song found that in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries
every yangban family did its best to restrict marriage arrangements for both sons
and daughters only to other yangban families, and he presumed that this pattern
had to be true of the early Choson period as well, but he did not demonstrate it
empirically.3^1
Song held that even officeholding was not absolutely essential for the main-
tenance of yangban status, and it may not have conferred yangban status on a
family without a previous record of prestigeY He also argued that obtaining the
lesser litcrary (chinsa) and classics (sa eng won) licentiate degrees did not con-
fer eligibility for an official appointment but guaranteed yanghan status. It was
also necessary to maintain a reputation for Confucian scholarship or the con-
duct of Confucian rituals, and to demonstrate skill in poetry and calligraphy.
Receiving merit subject status conferred by the king also contributed to the pres-
tige of the family and helped it to maintain yangban status. While the impor-
tance of education appears to have emphasized individual accomplishment in
attaining yangban status, it also appeared likely to Song that a tradition of schol-
arship in certain families over generations provided a de facto advantage to those
over the ordinary commoner peasants.
Song also believed, contrary to Yu Sungwon, that the protection or am privi-
lege naturally reinforced hereditary yangban status bccausc it allowed the king
to appoint sons, grandsons, sons-in-law, younger brothers, and nephews of an
official of the first and second rank to a post up to two ranks bclow that of the
official in question. Other kinds of privileges included permission for the nothoi