CENTRAL BUREAUCRACY 625funds kept in the Left and Right Warehouses were to be used for all legitimate
costs of government including payments for all salaries and expenses for clerks,
government slaves, and soldiers, not just the salaries of the royal fami Iy and reg-
ular officials. The essence ofYu's whole system of finance was contained in this
notice, the centralization of finance, the regularization of all costs to be paid out
by government funds rather than by fees, bribes, or gratuities, and the setting
of fees for services.
To ensure that the transmission of goods was accompanied by accurate records
to eliminate stealing, Yu proposed that the granary and transport officials would
at all times be required to sign documents accompanying the transfer of funds.
The warehouse manager (YOnggwan) would take responsibility for making all
payments from warehouse funds, and superior responsibility for warehouse pay-
ments would devolve on the high-level officials (Tangsanggwan) of the Ministry
of Taxation. In other words, Yu expected that the usual protocol o[ signed doc-
uments and supcrior levels of jurisdiction would climinate the loss of govern-
ment funds, even though that in the past it had not succeeded in doing SO.46
Miscellaneous TasksIt is not necessary to describe every last capital agency that Yu wanted to retain,
but he did feel it was important to keep bureaus [or map keeping, rescuing and
saving the sick and indigent, guarding royal tombs, the Four Schools of the cap-
ital, and the Military Training Agency (possibly changed to the Capital Soldier
Office or Kyongbyongbu). He stipulated raising the salaries of the twenty tile
workers in the Tile Works (Waso) so that the state would guarantee their liveli-
hoods.^47 He lifted the current annual quota on membership in the Hall for
Advanced Scholars (Chinsawon) of thirty of the best scholars and students from
the National Academy to open more opportunity for them. He reduced the quota
of eunuchs in the Royal Concubine Office (AechOngso) from fifty to thirty but
authorized an additional sixty men to be assigned to the king's, queen's, and
crown prince's palace as well, and he required that they study fundamental Con-
fucian texts like the Four Books and Small Learning to obtain an increase in
salaries. Yu also declaimed against the current practice of eunuchs living with
wives and concubines and recommended that any that did so be punished and
dismissed,4^8
Yu did his best to organize most tasks of government within the framework
of the traditional Six Ministries, shifting responsibilities from one ministry to
another with only marginal justification, assigning new responsibilities for adju-
dicating criminal cases of high officials and administering control over slaves,
and transforming labor service to wage labor.