CENTRA L BUREA UCRACY 641
CONCLUSION
Yu Hyongwon was never committed to any fundamentalist or literal recreation
of ancient sage institutions, but he did believe that the bureaucracy as a whole
required a prime minister and two assistants who might also perform the func-
tions of moral and spiritual guides to the king, and that government business
should be divided into Six Ministries. Not only would the Six Ministries con-
duct its own affairs through its subordinate bureaus, but all independent agen-
cies that had been created since the hirth of bureaucratic government would he
subordinated to one of the Six Ministries. All duplication, sinecures, overlap-
ping responsibilities, and artificial distinctions between imperial confidantes and
regular bureaucrats, and civil and military officials, had to be eliminated.
Yu's plan for eliminating superfluous agencies would have introduced impor-
tant new principles of organization. not simply attempted a fundamentalist return
to the Chou model. He would have reduced the staff of professional remon-
strators because they had proved more harmful than heneficial to the goal of
healthy politics. He would have cut government costs not only hy personnel
reductions, but also by converting required services to fully funded and financed
activities. He would have consolidated authority over shops and marketplaces
in a specific ministry and abolished overlapping responsihility. reduced the super-
fluity of police agents in the capital, and streamlined the military establishment.
He would have aholished the Office of Censor-General and the Office of Royal
Documents.
But he would also have created a bureau for slaves along with the previous
Slave Agency to handle the case load of ownership disputes, even against his
dislike for slavery as an institution. He would have freed the office of histori-
ans from the domination of the prime minister, upgraded the skills and grades
of doctors, pharmacists, and interpreters, raised the educational levels of
eunuchs, and tightened the administration of granaries and warehouses by requir-
ing accurate records and countersigning of receipts and disbursements. A dis-
cussion that began with praise for the hallowed institutions of ancient Chou had
ended up as an excuse for a significant rationalization in government procedures
and costs.
Yu concentrated attention on the weaknesses and anomalies in the service of
irregular clerks and runners in capital bureaus. Probably his most significant pro-
posal was to provide regular salaries for all clerks to eliminate one of the major
drives toward corruption that was built into the Choson bureaucratic system.
Unfortunately. it was never adopted.
He also hoped to transform the organization of clerks completely by divid-
ing them into two levels and permitting promotion of ordinary clerks to chief
clerks by the introduction of an examination system. Paradoxically, there was
freer access to official posts by clerks in the more aristocratic age of the Koryo
dynasty than in the supposedly bureaucratic age of Choson, and even by the early