CENTRAL BUREAUCRACY 62I
insistence on adherence to Chinese precedent. The bureau had been established
separately in the Chason period to adjudicate disputes over the ownership and
status of slaves, a particularly egregious problem for a society that qualified as
a slave society by most standards of measurement. A separate Slave Agency
(Changyewon) had already been established by King Sejo in the mid-fifteenth
century, and contrary to the maxim for eliminating duplicatc agencies Yu agreed
in this instance to retain it along with his proposed Slave Bureau because the
great increase in the slave population had increased the volume of lawsuits over
ownership. The solution seems strange because the volume of business could
easily have been handled simply by expanding the personnel of his Slave Bureau,
but he was obviously reluctant to abolish the creation of King Sejo,35
Yu acknowledged that there was no precedent in his Chinese sources for a
separate slave agency, and like slavery itself, he also argued that it should be
abolished, but it could not be dispensed with until slavery disappeared and law-
suits over slave ownership along with it. Not only did he retain the Slave Agency
to adjudicate disputes, he also planned to continue using state or official slaves
as runners and servants for central government bureaus and agencies. The State
CounciL for example, was to be staffed by ninety slave runners (chone) in addi-
tion to twenty-four clerksY'
Administration of Hired Labor in Ministry o.lWorks
Yu did intend to replace labor service with hired wage labor, but he provided
that it be administered by the Ministry of (Public) Works rather than the Min-
istry of Taxation. He provided for flexible expansion in the staff of the Bureau
of Construction (Yongjosa) to oversee hired artisans and construction workers,
and to review their performance on a monthly basis to encourage better quality
and efficiency. Quality control was not to depend exclusively on the carrot-and-
stick of wage increascs and reductions, but with punishment, so many strokes
over the legs with a bamboo staff to penalize neglect and dismissal for the incom-
petent. Nonetheless, he insisted that all labor on state construction projects be
done by hired workers paid by wages (kupka koin). In short, he sought the lib-
eration of workers in state projects from either slavery or corvee labor to wage
work, but not the defense of worker rights and dignity from the corporal pun-
ishment of state employers.Administration of Cadastral Survey in Ministry of Works
He also decided to locatc responsibility for cadastral surveys of land to accom-
pany his land reform program in the Ministry of Works as well, even though the
Ministry of Taxation normally handled this kind of task. In making this choice
he felt he had to justify it by taking advantage of ambiguity in the Book ofHis-
tory ancl the Rites of Chou relating to responsibilities for supervising produc-
tion and industry. In the former text, the Ssu-kung was the minister in charge