592 REFORM OF GOVERNMENT ORGANIZATIONact of cultivation, the mler had to encourage provincial governors and district
magistratcs to lead their subordinate officials to cultivate plots of earth as well. [6
He prescribed that a c/zl5kchOn ritual plot of one kyl5ng be established next to
the district shrine to the gods of earth and agriculture (sajiktan). Under his new
system the peasants who cultivated this plot would pay one-ninth of the crop
(in the well-field tradition) to support the rite performed at this altar and would
be exempted from payment of the land and cloth support taxes. The king would
personally cultivate his plot of land in the the spring in accordance with the rit-
ual in the Li-chi, but not necessarily in the first lunar month of that season as
that text described, but in the second lunar month when land was actually cul-
tivated in Korea. He would ride a wooden cart with a plow on its side and lead
his court officials to the eastern suburbs and personally turn over the earth, and
then conduct sacrificial rites at the Altar of Earth and Grain (sajik), the Ances-
tral Shrinc of the Royal Lineage (Chongmyo), and the shrines to mountains and
rivers. The queen would also lead the palace ladies out to a field and plant seed,
and the king would follow the Chou regulations for the number of times he was
obliged to wield the hoc. Wine and music would be forbidden at the ceremonies,
and the government would pay for the oxen and all implements used so that the
peasants would never be burdened by the cost. [7
The importance Yu placed on thc ruler's ritual act of cultivation indicates a
full commitment to his belief in agriculture as the main source of wealth and
welfare. Had he been more aware of nonagricultural industry and commerce as
equal, if not superior, methods of producing wealth and prosperity, he might
have created new icons for worship, but his pantheon of religious symbols was
still rather strictly confined to classical possibilities.
There is no question but that Yu placed high priority on the symbolic and rit-
ualistic rolcs of the king in conducting ceremonies to set a normative model for
the population, but it did not necessarily extend to his role as the chief executive.
Respectfor the Aged
Since respect for age was a major feature ofYu's proposed regulations for com-
munity compacts, it was not surprising that he also called for an annual cele-
bration of a rite dedicated to the care of the aged in the fall. The king would conduct
this ceremony when he made his annual visit to the National Academy where he
would grant gifts of food to men in their eighties and nineties. The precedent for
the ceremony, of course, carne from Chinese antiquity. According to the Li-chi
the sage Emperor Shun donned his simple and unadorned sim 'iii ceremonial gar-
ment in conducting rites in honor of the ages, and the commentator Kung Ying-
ta remarked that Shun performed four separate ceremonies that were supposedly
continued throughout the Hsia, Shang, and Chou dynasties as well. The Li-chi
also recorded that the elderly were honored in the National Academy and lesser
schools in the capital.