PART IV CONCLUSION 575
quota. Although famous for his radical y~jon program for national ownership
and egalitarian land distribution that was certainly inspired by classical mod-
els, his ideas about military service derived from two sources: the previous debate
over various tax alternatives and his own observation of popular adjustments to
the evils in the country's service systemY
YANGBAN POWERWhile Yu Hyongwon wanted to bring the yangban and commoner service
evaders back into service, the reformers of the next century wanted to impose
some sort of tax on them. The best that could be done, however, in the package
of reforms referred to as the equal-service system of 1750-52 was a fine on
24,500 of their number who could not devote enough time and effort to pass
what must have been an extremely easy qualifying test for registration in school.
This was the measure that King Yongjo, a professed advocate of a household
tax on yang ban as well as commoners, was barely able to achieve in 1750. Why
so? Why such a feeble conclusion to over a century of debate? Was it because
the eighteenth century officials were weak and cowardly compared to the res-
olute and determined scholars of principle like Yu Hyongwon?
Hardly. The best answer is to be found in two problems - the power of the
yangban and their representatives in the bureaucracy, and the weakness of the
bureaucracy itself as an efficient instrument of central authority. What made the
interests of the yangban so formidable was that their opponents and critics -
kings seeking to maximize their power and reformers seeking a more equitable
distribution of wealth and tax burdens - were limited and restrained in their con-
test with the yangban. Kings were fearful of the political threat posed by dis-
contented yangban. not simply as leaders of mass rebellion, but as supporters
of palace coup d'etats. Even supposedly resolute monarchs like Yongjo believed
in the image of yang ban as a class of educated men deserving of respect even
though he knew full well that claims for tax-excmption hased on status privi-
lege were being put forward by simple tax evaders, not necessarily heirs of the
great scholars and officials of past generations.
Just as Yongjo was limited by his own feelings from a direct challenge to the
prestige and privilege of the yangban, so too were scholarly reformers like Yu
HY()llgwon limited ill their radicalism by natural sympathies for their fellows.
No matter how deflated the coin of yangban status had become because of the
constant striving of lower orders for higher prestige and privilege, the rock bed
of that status was still deemed to he knowledge and mastery of the Confucian
canon. For that reason, even reformers like Yu who spoke the language of clas-
sical egalitarian radicalism, could not bring themselves to demand a lOlal and
ruthless leveling of the existing social order. That is why Yu argued at times for
the preservation, at least for the time being. of the slave servants of the yang-
ban until such time that they could get used to the idea of doing some manual
labor and cleaning up after themscl ves, or why he proposed a system of schools