PER SON N E L POLl C Y 667others by prohibiting them from taking examinations (kttmgo). He personally
knew cases of nothoi of great learning and scholarship. like Yi Chungho and
Kim Kiln'gong, who ended their days in starvation. Had the Chinese ever
observed this rule they would have lost the services of the great Sung scholar,
Fan Chung-yen. Any Korean king desirous oftransforming Korean society ought
to begin by abolishing the restrictions against the nothoi.^60
Yu also cited the writing of Yu Songnyong, who was also a vigorous expo-
nent of expanding opportunities to men of talent. He argued that sages like the
Duke of Chou recruited scholars living in ramshackle huts. Kuan-chung of the
state of Ch'i chose two robbers to be officials, and Yen Ying appointed his char-
iot driver to be a high minister (Ta-fu) just because he had made one astute remark.
The search for men of talent in the Former Han dynasty yielded so many good
men that evcn the posts of clerks for district magistrates were filled with men
of worth. In post-Han times the preference for education as the basis for recruit-
ment in China was undermined by consideration of pedigree (munji), which kept
the meritorious out of high office to languish in the lowest posts. Cho advised
that "One should not speak of whether a man is of high pedigree or from the
class of base persons but should only seek for men of worth and talent, and that
is all." Furthermore. regional discrimination against men from the northwest
was to be offset by purposely appointing men from that region.^61
In short, the last weakness in personnel administration that Yu chose to men-
tion was the severe social status discrimination of seventeenth-century Korea,
a problem that had not been experienced in comparable degree since the North-
ern and Southern dynasties (ca. 200-600). Yu's predecessors, like Cho Hon and
Yu Songnyong and many others, had objected mightily to this narrowing of
opportunity in the Korean bureaucracy, and they all perceived it as a tremen-
dous obstacle to recruitment of the most qualified men for office.
Personnel Reform: Periodic Recommendation Procedures
In devising his own program for reform of personnel administration, Yu
Hyongwon followed Yulgok's criticism against the transfer of responsibility for
review and recommendation to the Nanggwan and the censorate. Yu wanted to
reduce the censorate from its current staff of three offices (Sahonbu, Saganwon,
and Hongmun'gwan) to the Office of Inspector-General (Sah6nbu) alonc and to
abolish the right of review (sogyong) of proposed appointments by the Office
of Inspector-General because it frequently had shown preference for yangban
of pedigreed families. Instead he preferred to return to the earlier system of per-
sonnel review by the restored State Council, the Ministries (of PersonncJ and
War), and the Office of Inspector-General, and achieve reform by extending tours
of duty and conducting periodic review of their performance every three years
to eliminate favoritism from personnel procedure.^62
In addition to the annual review procedures conducted through the Ministry
of Personnel, Yu sought also to introduce a periodic recommendation procedure