PERSONNEL POLICY 661Cho Han: Desultory Review Procedure and Labor Costs. Cho Hon (pen name,
Chungbong), who was killed in fighting against the Japanese in 1592. also praised
Chinese caution in reviewing candidates for office primarily because its pur-
pose was to keep criminals or unworthy men out of the bureaucracy. In China,
the emperor would evaluate officials every third year and promote only those
who completed the full nine-year term of office, but in Korea the quality of men
for office was infcrior and lacked a good understanding of moral and social prin-
ciples, and the Ministry of Personnel skipped the elongated review process and
made perfunctory recommendations to the king on the very day of appointment.Almost all appointments are filled in desultory fashion. They select people from
the East and use them to fill up vacancies in the West. They appoint people to
office in the morning and transfer them in the evening. The officials in the capi-
tal and provinces do not understand what their jobs arc all about. and perhaps
even before their scats have a chance to get warm they distort the records. steal
property. and succumb to the schemes of the wily clerks. When new officials are
greeted or when old officials are sent off. men and horses are commissioned to
run around for a distance of a thousand i [transporting transferred oflicials to
their new posts 1 thereby destroying the production of the poor people. This is
also an evil which does not exist in China!Cho Han extolled the Chinese system because it was designed to spare the
peasants the burden of paying for the traveling costs of all appointed officials
by requiring officials to take out private loans to pay their expenses, pay inter-
est rates on the loan, or sell their land and slaves to raise the cost. He also wanted
the king to order the Ministry of Personnel to discuss all candidates thoroughly,
and permit no recommendation of favorites based on "private and intimate"
knowledge. The ministry should select primary candidates for thc king. appoint
them for long terms of office, and require that they demonstrate some accom-
plishment in office before gaining eligibility for promotion. Otherwise there
would he no guarantee of the diligence of officials in pursuing their tasks.^48
The Nanggwan in the Ministries o{Personnel and War. Yu's methods of cor-
recting the process of personnel appointments differed significantly from the
historical development of the sixteenth century. In the fifteenth century the top
officials of the Ministry of Personnel and War were responsible for recommending
candidates while the censors had the task of rejecting unqualified ones. Never-
theless, because high-level officials proved susccptible to demands from friends
for favors. kings decided to delegate responsibility for recommending appoint-
ments to the staff-level officials (Nanggwan) in the Ministries of Personnel and
War. During the opposition to Yansan'gun and after his deposition by King
Chungjong in 1506, the Nanggwan frequently associated with members of the
censorate anel the Hongmun'gwan (Office of Special Counselors) - particularly
the followers of Cho Kwangjo -in criticizing and opposing the high officials.
Even after the purge of Cho's adherents in 1519, the Nanggwan continued to