6IO REFORM OF GOVERNMENT ORGANIZATIONA second theme in Yu's treatment of the king was his use of ritual to achieve
certain moral and behavioral objectives among the population. This theme was
illustrated by his emphasis on ritual cultivation of the king's plot and royal cer-
emonies to honor the aged because both were used to illustrate the traditional
Confucian arguments about the primacy of agriculture in the economy and the
necessity to respect elders. By having the king act out his respect for these two
principles by the conduct of cercmonies in public, Yu hoped to rectify lapses
from the observance of these two principles over time, that is, the tendency of
peasants to neglect cultivation or abandon it altogether for more profitable pur-
suits. and the weakness or recalcitrance among the peasantry in meeting the needs
of elders in society, despite the state's aim to indoctrinate everyone in society
in Confucian norms.
The third and final theme in Yu's treatment of the king was his attempt to sub-
ject royal authority and power to thc restraining influence of the bureaucracy, a
tendency that was quite conventional in Confucian lore. He sought to create a
strong premiership that would act as chief executive in charge of the entire bureau-
cracy, an obvious attempt to keep the king at some distance from the decision-
making process and turn him into a rubber stamp for Confucian, bureaucratic
wisdom.
A corollary to his goal of asserting bureaucratic control over the king was
reestablishing the supremacy of the State Council over the Border Defense Com-
mand, a sixteenth-century ad hoc national security council that had taken over
supreme deliberative functions. This was one of the few objectives that was even-
tually achieved. The leading critic of the Border Defense Command in the early
seventeenth century was the statesman Ch'oe Myonggil (d. 1647), who com-
pared it to the Shu-mi-yiianor Bureau of Mil itary Affairs of the Sung. He wanted
to replace it, however, with a system based on rang and Sung institutions adopted
in Koryo times and some borrowing from the Ming system, not the early Choson
State Council.4~
The problem did not generate a great debate, but in 1864 the minor King
Kojong, acting under instructions from the dowager-regent, carried out the
essence ofYu's proposal to replace the Border Defense Command with the old
State CounciPo Since the policy was undoubtedly decided by the king's father,
the Tacwongun, it is possible but unproved that he may have been influenced
by Yu·s ideas. Even though the reform was not carried out in conjunction with
many of Yu's other reforms for bureaucratic reorganization, such as reassign-
ing tasks to the bureaus of the Six Ministries, abolishing the Office of Censor-
General, strengthening the governor, reorganizing the boundaries of prefectures
and districts, and professionalizing the clerks and runners in the central and local
government, one cannot help but suspect the underlying and lingering influence
ofYu's thought.
This restoration of the State Council could not have taken place, however,
had the dynasty not been shaken to its roots by a serious peasant rebellion in
1862 and the increasing threat of foreign invasion. At the time the Taewongun