DEBATE OVER MILITARY TRAINING AGENCY 465
maintenance of the status quo in troop strength, if not an increase in troop quo-
tas, was motivated by domestic political considerations -no longer because of
the threat of foreign invasion or emotional schemes to take revenge on the
ManchusY
The Anti-Manchu Division and Defense Command, [681-90The Westerners also sought to build up their control of two other important units
in the capital region. The Anti-Manchu Division of Kyonggi Province and the
Defense Command stationed at the Namhan fort had long been under the con-
trol of Westerner officials, even before 1680. Yi T'aejin has called them "the last
bastion that the Westerners had in their competition with the Southerners until
Sukchong's reign."5^2 Both forces underwent a gradual change in their compo-
sition throughout most of the seventeenth century, mainly by the accretion of a
separate capital garrison staffed by different categories of rotating duty soldiers.
These included the Standard Bearers (P'yohagun) and ivory soldiers (ahyang)
or personal troops of ordinary civil and military officials as well as unit com-
manders. Somc were uscd to cultivate military colony lands (/unjon) of the Anti-
Manchu Division almost like slaves. Others included flag bearers or honor
guardsmen of great strength or prowess. In other words, many of the troops of
the capital garrisons of the Anti-Manchu Division and Defense Command func-
tioned as the personal bodyguards of their political commanders.
By Sukchong's succession in 1674, the Anti-Manchu Division had a miminum
force of 20,000 men drawn from Kyonggi Province organized and divided into
five divisional headquarters (the oyang system). In 1687, the number of divi-
sional headquarters was reduced to three, and remained that way until a major
reorganization was undertaken in 1704.^53
When the commander was at the headquarters in thc capital, the provincial
troops of the Defense Command were controlled by the vice-commander, a post
held concurrently by the magistrate of Kwangju (K wangju-huyun). In 1681,
Min Yujung, Kim Sokchu's rival in the Patriarch's Faction. asked that the cap-
ital headquarters be abolished hecause it placed the commander of the Defense
Command at some distance from his troops in the province, and in 1683 Song
Siyol backed the idea because the capital headquarters imposed an extra and
unnecessary burden of service and taxation on peasants who were being dunned
constantly by two commanders instead of one. Since almost all the leading West-
erner officials at court supported the recommendation, Sukchong abolished both
the capital headquarters and the post of commander (Suosa). The magistrate of
Kwangju was upgraded to a Yusu (special mayor) and given exclusive jurisdic-
tion ovcr the Dcfense Command.
The original system of a separate commander stationed in the capital was
restored in 1690, a year after the Southerners returncd to power, on the grounds
that the troop quota of the unit had been allowed to shrink and military capa-
bility had become lax. Judging from reports of discontent among the thousand