CHAPTER 19
The Community Compact System
(Hyangyak)
The Reform Bureau of 1862 had objected to adopting Chu Hsi's village gra-
nary system because it was too closely connected with the kind of local orga-
nization associated with the community compact system, and since that system
did not exist in Korea at that time, it would be too difficult to create it in con-
junction with the village granaries. The Reform Bureau's description ofthe rela-
tionship between the two institutions was COlTect. Yu did favor administration
of village granaries by local communities because he felt that local control would
eliminate bureaucratic corruption and guarantee honest administration, but hon-
est administration was not his only reason for admiring community compacts.
The attempt to create an additional level of organization beneath the local
administrator or district magistrate goes all the way back to the eady Chou
dynasty in Yu's account. Since the ruler of the state in the capital could not always
be sure that the district magistrate was faithfully can'ying out his orders, main-
taining law and order, and assessing taxes equitably, he sought to enlist men in
the villages, usually the prominent members of the villages, to act as spies or
agents to watch the magistrate and keep him in check. If, however, the local elite
was too powerful, the magistrate would find it impossible to carry out the ruler's
will, let alone his own desires, and the ruler might find it necessary to reverse
the balance of power.
Institutions of local self-government were also established as agencies of
mutual surveillance to mobilize the local population to take the place of what
otherwise would bc an excessively massive and costly apparatus of control. But
since villagers might not be overjoyed with spying on their ncighbors and report-
ing malfeasants to the authorities, the state might have to step in and superim-
pose a mutual surveillance system by fiat on the natural village. The social
harmony of village life would have been rapidly ruptured whenever a villager's
report of a putative abelTant act was followed up by the bastinado of the mag-
istrate's lietors. To be sure, sueh mutual surveillance societies were also to be
devoted to mutual aid and the mutual inculcation of moral norms and values,