PERSONNEL POLICY 659Yu concluded that Ch'eng Hao's hall was the institution that would cap off
his total system of rccruitment, from village recommendation, promotion
through a restored system of state schools, appointment to office, and promo-
tion by sponsorship or recommendation. He undoubtedly ended his essay on
the Chinese experience on this note, as if virtually nothing new had to be learned
for use in Korea from the Sung, Yuan, and Ming periods.~6
Had Yu been as much of an empiricist as some modern scholars claim, he
would have conducted a far more detailed study of post-Sung bureaucratic prac-
tices. His confidence in the efficacy of recommendation or sponsorship might
well have been undermined had he recognized evidence of the flaws of that sys-
tem in Sung times. Aspiring officials found it difficult to obtain the required num-
ber of recommendations, and it was hard to overcome one bad recommendation
from a superior. The system did not guarantee that obscure men oftalent would
necessarily be discovered, and mandatory sponsorship produced as much syco-
phancy as in earlier periods.^47
The Chinese literature on personnel procedures confirmed Yu's belief that face-
to-face evaluation of aspirants to office and incumbent officials was absolutely
essential for maintaining the integrity of the bureaucracy as a whole. Through-
out the long history of bureaucratic practice in China, that integrity had been
undermined by laxity in a number of ways. Objective evaluation had been
obstructed by routine practices such as promotion based on time-in-grade, the
inherited rank of individuals, personal connections, and favoritism. The growth
and development of the Chinese empire also brought with it a huge increase in
the number of officials, urbanization, and thc concentration of ambition on the
capital and the other major cities, the development of impersonal procedures in
the examination system and the routine of bureaucratic control in the remote
Ministries of Personnel and War.
Yu concluded that only a reversal of these trends was bound to confer suc-
cess, returning from the impersonal to the personal, from big to small. from cen-
trality to locality, and from greed, ambition, and ceJn"uption to moral education,
training, and rectitude. Part of the reason for this was an attitude that he shared
with many Confucians, the feudal ideal of a perfect government that operated
in ancient China. He lived in a bureaucratic age but did not admire it much; he
had no choice but to compromise with it and seek to rectify its errors because
he knew there was no way to return to feudalism.
REFORM OF KOREAN PERSONNEL ADMINISTRATIONTo ensure that officials who remained in office would meet the highest standards
of competence, Yu Hyongwon also sought to recruit the most talented men in
the country, give them ample time to gain experience on the job, evaluate their
performance, and allow for promotion of the meritorious and dismissal of the
incompetent. Unfortunately, a number of bureaucratic practices had undermined
high standards for officials. Short terms of office prevented officials from