PROVINCIAL AND LOCAL ADMIN ISTRATION 685ners and service personnel. Yu pointed out that the service system consumed all
available men for work at the magistrate's yamen within a distance of a dozen i
(four miles) from the yamen, leaving no one to serve as local guard soldiers. The
needs of local officials required a specific number of runners depending on nec-
essary duties, and it was unwise to reduce the quota of service personnel. These
service personnel also had to be specified for local military commands as well.
The equivalent of runners in the military system were Kulloe, who enrolled in
ranks distinct from soldiers. Yu wanted a numbcr to be assigned to each military
garrison and during wartime they could serve the needs of duty soldiers.^26
Yu's plan also called for service personnel to serve in the revamped school
system that would replace the examination system as the means of recruitment
of officials. He singled out the staff for the large prefectural school (Puhak) that
would have a single secretary (Sagi) and twenty-two runners including cooks,
vegetahle gardeners, granary guards, room cleaners, and servants to wait on tables.
Yu instructed the runners to keep the dormitories warm, serve the students at
the dining room table, set up their washing and drinking facilities, establish
latrines, and handle collection of night soil for fertilizer. Yu proclaimcd his objec-
tive was to estahlish government schools after the manner of Buddhist monas-
teries in contemporary times, citing the words of Ch'eng I of the Sung, that the
monasteries in fact reproduced the dignified life style of antiquity because of
simplicity of their communities. In similar fashion Yu outlined the staff require-
ments as well for the large military Ch'amsa garrison with a staff of five clerks,
nineteen runners, and two boy servants (less for a garrison run by the Manho),
and a post-station (Yak) served by three clerks. fourteen runners, and two boy
servants.^27
Yu's plans to provide for local clerks and eliminate the main cause for cor-
ruption was never adopted, but by the next century existing evidence appears to
indicate that the clerks. now referred to as middle men (chung 'in or ajon), began
to rise in prestige and technical qualifications partially as a result of the reduc-
tion of their numbers after Hideyoshi's invasions. Membership in their ranks
was no longcr confined hereditarily to the sons of local clerks alone because
magistrates had to appoint temporary clerks to fi II vacancies in their ranks. Despite
the pejorative label of chung'in, they actually asserted themselves by gaining
greater control of the six branches of local administration (Yukpang) that had
replaced the chief clerk (Hojang) ofthe early Chos6n period. They began to over-
come their domination by the local yangban associations and assert more inde-
pendence, partly because more regular funds for their support increased by the
growing amount of land surtaxes imposed on peasant taxpayers. As much as
one-third of tax revenues may have been devoted to the costs of local clerks by
the nineteenth century. As the clerks became more important, it has been sug-
gested that they were no longer so submissive and capitalized on their superior
knowledge of local conditions to act as coconspirators with the magistrates in
fleecing the peasantry. Although it cannot be proved that local clerks were any
more capable of conspiring with corrupt magistrates in the late rather than early