MILITARY SERVICE SYSTEM 539payments. The country could not afford the luxury of such a large number of
tax-exempt individuals, a group that far surpassed what anyone would define as
a hcreditary yangban class even under the broadest definition.
The main task, therefore, was not simply forcing yangban, or hereditary aris-
tocrats, back into a system of service in elite guard units, but requiring the major-
ity of the population to pay its fair share of taxes for the support of the military
establishment. But this was resisted because developing a broader fiscal base
for military finance would have violated the classical principles that Yu Hyongwon
and some other active officials held dear - the injunctions against separating
farmers from soldiers or requiring the payment of taxes to support permanent
duty soldiers.
FACTIONAL POLITICS AND THE THREAT OF REBELLIONAnother problem that affected the capacity for reform of thc military system
was the military challengc that faced Korea at the time. The threat of foreign
invasion had waned considerably by the end of the seventeenth century. Japan
had withdrawn largely within hcrself and the powerful Ch'ing dynasty had
secured Korea from other predators from the north and had moderated its trib-
ute demands. These positive developments, however, did not eliminate the need
for a military force because factional politics became more brutal and violent
after 1689. King Sukchong himself was largely responsible for the exacerba-
tion of political disputation, but he still felt the need to maintain a more-than-
adequate force of troops especially around the capital to protect himself against
potential usurpers.
After Sukchong postponed major reform in the military service system in 1682,
no changes were made for twenty years until the same problems came up for
debate at court in 1704. In the interim, however, two major changes occurred
in politics: in 1689 Sukchong shifted his favor from the Westerners to the South-
erners, and in 1694 he suddenly reversed his position, discharged his Southerner
government and replaced them wholesale with Westerners. These political rever-
sals were related to alignments of officials behind candidates to the throne, which
usually involved support for one of the king's consorts and their male issue. King
Sukchong was the major cause of the problcm because his devotion to his wives
and favorite concubines was short-lived, and every time he shifted his favor, he
demanded full support from all members of his court. Those unlucky groups or
factions of officials that failed to comply with Sukchong's wishes on these mat-
ters were condemned to political disaster in the form of a purge of all their mem-
bers, sometimes accompanied by a rash of executions.
In the 1680s Yun Chung, one of the followers of Song Siyol, split from the
Westerners because he could not stand Song's overbearing arrogance. The group
that followed him became known as the Disciple's Faction (Soron) while Song
and the other Westerners were called the Patriarch's Faction (Noron). The Dis-