PROVINCIAL AND Lac A L ADMINISTRATION 699
people to begin with, and there was no necessity to segregate a portion of that
reserve under the title of hwanja loans. The magistrates should be able to use
those reserves for military expenses without being limited by the hwanja allo-
cation. Tn fact, in current practice magistrates even loaned out grain that was
supposed to be stored for military provisions anyway. leaving them without
resources to pay military costs. The reserve funds of the magistrates should be
used to pay for all official expenses, civil as well as military.47
Yu conceded, however, that if a famine occurred, officials might be forced to
grant loans to peasants even after the hwanja system was abolished, but at least
it would only be a temporary measure, and it would not continue on a regular,
annual basis as an "unlimited evil." Furthermore, magistrates might adopt aver-
sion of the workfare system either to take funds from the ever-normal system
and use it to hire workers without calling it charity, or to rent land to people.
Village Granary System. Yu did not intend that thc hwanja systcm be replaced
by the ever-normal system alone but by the adoption of Chu Hsi's village gra-
nary system as wcl1.4x The village granary system would take loans out of the
hands of officials and put them under the control of the vi llage elders. and even-
tually interest charges would be ended after initial capitalization was repaid and
a loan fund for the future was accumulated.
The background material that Yu provided prior to expounding his own plan
for a village granary was derived exclusively from Chinese sources. Even though
he did use Korean materials with regard to other institutions, he neglected to
mention Yulgok's regulations for a village granary drawn up in 1577 for the town
of Haeju in Hwanghae province, even though Yu later cited Yulgok's statements
about the organization and rules for community compacts (hyangyak). This was
rather a blatantomission since Yulgok's Haeju village granary was tied together
with the Haeju community compact and also incorporated many of the norms
of the compact in its own regulations.
Yulgok's rules also called for relief loans to poor peasants at a 20 percent rate
of interest (2 toe per mal of grain loaned), or 30 percent if the granary was short
of grain. but forbade loans to any persons not members of the village granary
association. Since membership in that association required conformity to the
extensive list of rules of etiquette and behavior, Yulgok wanted to enforce the
adoption of Confucian behavior by eliminating recalcitrants from the local relief
system. He did allow loans to be granted to a close relative of a member or a
slave (nobok) who had not yet joined the granary association, but if they failed
to repay, the members would have to repay the loan in his place.
Loans were dispensed three times a month beginning on the first day of the
first month, and repayments would begin on the eleventh day of the ninth month
through the twenty-first day of the first month of the next year. Every ten fam-
ilies would choose a ten-family head (T'ongju) to supervise repayments. Any
borrower who failed to repay the loan after the eleventh month would suffer
first-degree punishment (see section on Yulgok's village granary regulations in
chapter 19), and the ten-family head would receive third-degree punishment. If