MILITARY REORGANIZATION 515
them at each garrison and have them examined on the four military classics and
the writings of Ch'i Chi-kuang.J3
At the same time superfluous officials left over from the old system, the
Tohundo, were to be abolished, not only useless ones with no duties, but also
the garrison commanders or Yongjang created in recent years who only dupli-
cated the work of the provincial military commanders and the magistrates of
garrison towns. In fact these Yongjang had taken over the job of making rounds
of inspection previously done by the Provincial Military Commander, who now
sat around in idleness doing nothing but attending parties and banquets. Another
superfluous post, that of Chunggun (middle officer or governor's military aide)
stationed at the governor's yamen, was also to be abolished.^34
Yu also called for elimination of the personal aides or soldiers called ivory
soldiers (aby6ng) assigned not only to military officers but to civil yamen as
well. Only the provincial governor should be allowed a quota of anywhere from
one to three hundred of them. and their positions were to be filled by the sog ()
(slave?) soldiers attached to the district town in which the governor's office was
located. The ivory soldiers were to be trained like the sogo troops and not sim-
ply used as cloth taxpayers according to current practice. There was no need for
them in other yamen at all, and they had never been part of the early Choson
military system.3S In addition. the permanent military police (kullo) stationed
at military headquarters could be replaced by runners (sarw1ng)Y'
Finally, Yu hoped to eliminate corruption in the provincial garrisons by pro-
viding regular salaries to the commanders. Like the clerks and runners in provin-
cial and disHict civil yamen, the provincial army and navy commanders in charge
of garrisons (chinjang) were not provided with regular salaries. Yu felt that this
was the main cause of the common practice among garrison commanders of
discharging soldiers on duty in return for payment of a cloth tax instead, "a prac-
tice that has become so bad that it cannot be abolished." Since civilian clerks
and runners at these garrisons were also not given salaries. the commanders were
using troops to perform their functions, at some reduction of the number of trained
soldiers available for defense. The solution to this was to provide quotas of reg-
ular salaried clerks so that the soldiers performing their duties could be returned
to military service.^3 ;
Troop TrainingYu also endorsed Yu Songnyong's praise of Ch'i Chi-kuang's sogo organization
as a remedy for the almost total confusion among Korean troops during Hideyoshi's
invasion. Yu Songnyong had described Korean troops in the following fashion:Basically they do not know anything ahout fighting, and they have no units such
as platoons, squads, hanners, or companies to which they arc attached. They are
in confusion and without order, make a big racket and run around in chaos, not
knowing what to do with their hands, feet. ears, or eyes. And then all of a sudden