586 REFORM OF GOVERNMENT ORGANIZATION
oppressive levying of uncompensated labor service on ordinary peasants. Since
the precedents hc sought for these regulations were also taken from classic exam-
ples, his proposal for reform did not mean that he wanted to eliminate any of the
religious or pietistic ceremonies of ancestor worship. On the contrary, he
opposed the suggestion that the expenses for state funerals for royal relatives
could be reduced greatly if the number of eligible relatives be cut back to only
the highest ranks or closest relatives because the king was obliged to provide
gifts and pay for sacrificial rites for all royal relatives. By the same token, he
expanded the realm of individuals warranting state support for funerals and sac-
rifice from royal relatives and officials from the first and second ranks to the
tangsang category. That category included some third-rank officials and officials
on a mission abroad to a foreign nation to symbolize the close relations between
the king and his highest ministers. In other words, while demanding cost-cut-
ting and frugality in expcnses for royal relatives, he was not averse to adding a
few extra members of the bureaucratic class for state-supported funerals.
He did insist that the cost of these funerals and the burden imposed on com-
moners for the labor required in conducting the funeral and building the burial
tombs had to be limited. Instead of the traditional practice of commandeering
uncompensated labor, officials in charge of funerals were henceforth to be required
to hire all labor needed. A bureau in the capital would work out the itinerary for
the funeral route, designate the post-stations and passes along that route, list the
authorized expenses, have them posted at each station, and transfer a copy to
the district magistrates involved. Those hired to build tombs might be recruited
from a locality, but only for three days, and all were to be compensated for their
work. Any provincial governor or district magistrate who recruited unpaid labor
on his own would receive one hundred strokes and sent to the frontier as an ordi-
nary duty soldier on the line. Any magistrate who found he could do the work
with less labor but collected a substitute cloth fcc from the workers for his own
profit, or any noble family who received payments from the state for funeral
expenses and demanded uncompensated labor from district magistrates in addi-
tion would be indicted for criminal action. The number of tomb construction
workers was to be limited according to the status of the deceased, and all com-
pensation was to be paid from public funds.
One of the more onerous forms of local labor was bearing the biers of deceased
yangban or scholars or those who had connections with officials to their graves.
Yu estimated that the peasants of Kyonggi Province, where more funerals of nob il-
ity and high officials took place than anywhere else, had to perform this duty as
coffins passed through their district five or six times a month. They had to pro-
ceed to the road in advance and pay for their own food during the several days
it took for the bier to arrive in their town. As they transported the bier to the next
district boundary, they had to suffer the whipping of the overseers, who pressed
them to move more quickly. Even though state laws provided for oxen to drag
the funeral carts, the magistrates ignored this regulation, or they required local
inhabitants, instead of the relatives of the deceased, to bear the cost of the oxen.