504 MILITARY REFORM
dynasty. This arrangement would solve two problems at once: it would prevent
an excess of troops at the capital while ensuring that the soldiers the state did
have could really be of some use in combat.s
The earlier Five Guard system, which had command and defense responsi-
bilities for each of the provinces, proved worthless when Hideyoshi invaded
Korea, but it was not removed from the military table of organization and appar-
ently retained vestigial functions in the defense of the capital. After the Injo
Restoration of 1623, new guard divisions were created with responsibilities that
overlapped and replaced the functions of the older Five Guards, which appar-
ently were not legally abolished.^6 yu·s restored Five Guards, as opposed to the
earlier version, were to be responsible only for capital defense, to pare down
the politicized capital divisions of the period after the Injo Restoration. He also
wanted to eliminate the current Five Guards Directorate (Owi toch'ongbu) that
exercised overall control over the Five Guards because there was no precedent
for it in ancient timcs, and instead to direct each of the Five Guards to report
directly to the Ministry of War.^7
One of his objectives was to achieve a balance between civilian control and
military necessity, a point illustrated by his remedies for the problems of com-
mand at the capital. He complained that the guard commanders (wijang) of the
current Five Guards (Owi) at the capital had no fixed assignment to any partic-
ular unit and were merely given a command whenever they checked in for duty.
For that matter, a few days after they rcported, they might be transferred again
to another command. Even the rank-and-file soldiers of the palace gate guards
(kammun) and the capital constabulary (sun wi) were only given duty assign-
ments daily at dusk and then suddenly transferred to another post a few days
later. There was no familiarity between commanders and troops and no conti-
nuity in the commanders, not only when on guard duty, but in military training
and on bivouac exercises.
He described the situation as one of utter confusion caused by the inordinate
fear of military domination by the civil officials. Just as the Sung government
had overreacted to the excessive political power of the late Tang regional com-
manders, so the early Choson authorities had sought to prevent a recurrence of
Ihe excessive power of the military in lale Koryo by rotating commanding offi-
cers. He conceded that the concern was justified, but not at the expense of national
defense. A confused system was worse than no system at all. "If one day there
were to be a sudden and unexpected problem [invasion], then how would we be
equipped to defend against it?" His solution was to assign commanders and offi-
cers to specific guard units with exclusive control over their units.s
Fully consistent with his abhorrence of permanent, salaried soldiers, Yu stip-
ulated that the troops of the Five Guards would be divided into groups or shifts
and serve on rotation for two-month tours of duty. All would be recruited from
districts adjacent to the capital and each soldier would have a basic assignment
(wonjong) to one of the capital guards to promote solidarity and identification
with their units. In fact, all soldiers from a given civil district would be assigned