508 MILITARY REFORM
No Capital Guard Servicesjor Remote ProvincesAnother part of Yu's military reorganization plan called for the assignment of
peasants in provinces more distant from the capital to provincial army com-
mander's headquarters or frontier garrisons to eliminate one of the anomalies
of the early Choson Five Guard system. In the fifteenth century soldiers from
all parts of the country were assigned to one of the Five Guards in the capital,
but since the troops from P'yong'an and Hamgyong provinces in the north were
kept in those provinces for permanent frontier defense, they were excused from
rotating service in the capital, and the two guard units to which they were assigned
were left without a troop contingent. His plan limited the source of supply for
the capital guards to districts surrounding the capital. This arrangement would
ensure reduction of travel expenses, ease of mobilization, a sense of solidarity
among the troops, and familiarity between commanders and soldiers. 18
Yu realized that his system of military service organization and assignments
differed from the fu-ping system that accompanied the Tang equal-field allot-
ment system, and he felt under some constraint to justify the differences. Under
thejlf-ping organization, local militia troops were assigned to various .Ill or che-
ch 'ullg~fi{ located in the provinces, and thef!.! wcre in turn placed under the com-
mand structurc ofthe sixtecn capital guard units. Although his plan to adopt the
chin'gwan system of provincial garrisons organized hicrarchically with a num-
ber of superior command garrisons in each province might be compared to the
Tang .Iii, nonetheless these provincial troops were not to be placed under the
command of the capital guards. He specifically stated that there was no need to
copy the Tangju-ping system exactly because every system of military orga-
nization devised after the destruction of the well-field system was at best a
makeshift adaptation to the circumstances of any given period. They were not
worth discussing because once the unity of farmer and soldier in the well-field
militia had been broken, there was no way to put it back together again.
The Tang equal-field system was the best of the makeshift programs of a "later
age" of decline, but what made it superior was its granting of land in combina-
tion with assigning military service to the grantee (kllpchOn chOngbyong), not
the creation ofju attached to the capital guards (wei). He believed that his plan
did approximate the well-field system in one respect: assigning troops to units
in close proximity to their villages. In the Chou the soldiers of districts near the
capital were attached directly to the capital chief military official, the Ssu-ma
(Sarna in Korean), while peasant-soldiers of the remote outer regions were
assigned to the chief regional officials or military commanders. This was a prin-
ciple that should not be changed no matter what the terminology used to dis-
tinguish territorial units. 19
Assignment ajTroops Near their Homes
To eliminate long-distance travel by soldiers to their duty stations, Yu specified