452 MILITARY REFORMon that formula only as large as the number of unregistered males he was able
to find. Whether this beginning would eventually succeed in saving the Military
Training Agency and convert it to an "independent" support-taxpayer system of
finance would depcnd on how it was administered. But in spirit, the king had
worked out a solution quite close to Yu Hyongwon's recommendation without
benefit of direct advice from him!
Thanks to the efforts of Yu Hyogyon. the commander of the agency, much
progress was madc to achieve this solution. Not only was the number of special
unit troops increased. but vacancies in the basic quota of Military Training Agency
continued to be filled with men financed by support taxpayers instead of allo-
cations from the Ministry of Taxation. One of the compilers of The Veritable
Record o.lKing Hyanjong noted that by 1671 alone Yu was able to expand the
special unit from 7,000 to 13,700 men. He divided them into 4 regiments, sus-
pended tours of duty during summer and fall, and required ro companies, or a
total of 1,370 men, to serve on duty during winter and spring. Each duty soldier
had 3 support taxpayers, or a total of 41,000 men for the whole unit. In addition,
the 6,000 men of the Military Training Agency itself eaeh had 4 support tax-
payers, or a total of 24,000, an increase of almost 5,000 over the 1669 figure.^22The Analysis of Song Sival, [670Weaknesses ()lthe Military Training Agency. Some time in late 1670 or early
1671, Song Siyol, who was resting at home during this period and evading
repeated requests from the king to attend court on the grounds of illness, drafted
a memorial that he apparently never submitted. The memorial contains a full
discussion of the problems of the Military Training Agency and an evaluation
of the results of the decision to establish Lhe special unit in 1669. Song again
expressed his "deep concern" over the agency and advocated its abolition on
three grounds: it was too costly and acted as a drain on the state treasury, and
the soldiers were "lazy," worthless, arrogant, and out of control; in fact, they
posed a serious threat of a coup d' etat.
Song argued that the financial burden on the state treasury to support the
agency's six-to-seven thousand permanent duty soldiers was equivalent to the
cost of a wartime army. The agency troops spent their time hanging around the
marketplace, never training, and barely able to stand the rigors of a hard run.
When they did have to march out on a royal progress as part of the retinue, they
were so out of condition that after only five or six miles they were "wheezing
like a pitch pipe and sweating like an overturned clam, falling down on the ground
from exhaustion one after the other, some even dying." Troops like these would
be of no use in wartime. "which is why ehu Hsi wanted the imperial guards to
be divided into rotating shifts of duty. When off duty they could return to their
home districts to feed themselves, and they would never be allowed to sit around
at their ease. "23
Song claimed that the agency soldiers had been terrorizing the residents of