532 MILITARY REFORMand became the cutters and polishers [of their own natures], while [those knowl-
edgeable in] military affairs ended up consisting of archers and boisterous wild
men only. This was because the selection of men was not in accordance with
the proper way."77
Yu also approved as well of one feature of Han dynasty local administration,
which provided that the magistrate be held responsible for military command
functions during wartime and that he be provided an aide (like the tu-wei in the
Han) who would assist him in military affairs and also take care of civil admin-
istration when the magistrate (i.e. the t 'ai-shou of the commandcry or chiin) was
in the field with the troops, or on occasion take the magistrate's place as com-
mander when necessary.7^8 Yu hoped by this plan to ensure that the district mag-
istrates would fulfill their responsibility to defend their districts, contrary to their
past record.
In the wars that have occurred off and on in our country the district magistrates
have all abandoned the defense of their territories without authorization. They
have either run off into the hills or taken refuge along the seacoast. This has
been the situation throughout all the prefectures and districts of the eight pro-
vinces. If it is a province you're talking about, then the whole province is left
without anyone in charge: if a district town, then the whole district has been left
without anyone in charge. Because of this once they hcar that the enemy is com-
ing. without waiting for the enemy to spread around, the whole country becomes
an empty wasteland and the government has no onc to whom it can issue orders.
The fighting troops have nothing to fear or avoid; they just make it their business
to take flight and scatter. Enemy bandit cavalry in groups of [only] three or four
men roam all over the eight provinces and plunder the country at will, and there
is no one who can say anything about it. ... We should post clear laws to the
effect that in wartime each district magistrate will defend his walled town to the
death and not leave it. Anyone who does abandon a town should be punished by
law without mercy: only then can we avoid this concem,79It would not take a military specialist to note that magistrates of small towns
with small populations might not have a sufficient force to resist large units of
a well-trained invading army. Yu himself realized that 80 or 90 percent of the
districts were in fact very small with sparse populations and defensive walls that
a goat could jump over in a single bound. He conceded that "If you hold a man
responsible for something he is not able to do and then follow this up by killing
him, isn't this close to killing an innocent man?" But he thought he could solve
the problem by reorganizing the whole layout of provincial districts and com-
bining small districts into decent-sized ones, each with a walled town of suffi-
cient strength to resist attack. 80 The idea, like many others, may have come from
Yulgok, and it explains why he devoted such a large part of his book to a com-
plete plan for administrative reorganization and the methods of constructing
strong walls.^8!