576 MILITARY REFORM
as a means of producing a truly qualified and educated elite that would deserve
the kind of status and privilege currently enjoyed by heirs of former officials by
hereditary claim rather than scholarly achievement. It was not until exemption
from military service and taxation had become so widespread that it probably
lost its utility as a means of conferring meaningful status that the people in the
villages began to divide up tax quotas among themselves on an equitable basis
without respect to the status of their households, and this development did not
occur until the end of the eighteenth century.
Those officials of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries who advocated
expansion of the tax base and extension of taxes to yangban were certainly no
less radical in their challenge to the social status quo than scholars like Yu
H yongwon, but they inherited their ideas from the active officials of the seven-
teenth century, not from Yu Hyongwon. And when the household cloth tax was
finally adopted by the Taewongun in the mid-nineteenth century, he was fol-
lowing in the footstcps of the practical, bureaucratic refonners of the seventeenth
and eighteenth century more than Yu Hyongwon or any separate tradition ofPrac-
tical Learning scholarship that was the exclusive preserve of scholars.
THE SHARED DIALOGUE BETWEEN OFFICIALS AND SCHOLARS
On other points as well, such as the organization of military forces, military strat-
egy in the face of invasion, the disposition of garrison forces, the construction
of walls, and the adoption of advanced military technology. Yu·s ideas were either
derivative of those of active officials like Yulgok (Yi I) and Yu Songnyong, or
were no more rational, empirical, progressive, or advanced than ideas held by
a number of active officials. Rcclusive scholars had no monopoly on rational-
ity, practicality, or reform. In fact, Yu ignored totally two areas that were absolutely
essential to the overall aspect of military defense in the seventeenth century -
domestic politics and diplomacy. His proposals for troop cuts and military reor-
ganization treated those subjects in a vacuum, but in real life the control and
disposition offorces was as much a product of political considerations as national
defense. The continual turmoil in the political realm - the coup d'etat in 1623
that led to the reign of King Injo, the Yi K wal rebellion of 1624, the suspicious
poisoning of Crown Prince Sohyon and the shaky legitimacy of King Hyojong
and his heirs, the purges of King Sukchong, the murders of Patriarchs and Dis-
ciples in the 17208, and the radical Disciple imsill rebellion of 1728 - meant
that the defense of the capital and the political control of the Five Military Divi-
sions in the capital region (along with provincial garrisons) would require a high
level of troops and a concentration of forces around the king. The first func-
tioned to drain the tax resources of the state, the second to weaken the nation
in the face of foreign threat. These were crucial problems, but they were not
discussed in Yu's magnum opus.
For that matter. he never raised the whole question of the wisdom of a hos-
tile, anti-Manchu policy in the context of the Manchu conquest of China. His