714 REFORM OF GOVERNMENT ORGANIZATION
Way (tohak) when, in reality, they spent their time in slander and unwarranted
criticism of officials of the court.
Cho Chin of the Censor-General's office demanded that community compacts
be abolished because the compact rule for ranking people according to age over-
turned traditional status distinctions, especially by placing slaves in places of
honor. In any case, King Chungjong, who had now lost his enthusiasm for the
community compacts, noted that he had already banned the compacts from meet-
ing and interfering in the administration of punishments, and had confined their
activities to funcrals and mutual aid in time of disaster. 17
The assistant director of the National Academy, Yi Hang, also charged that a
crowd of protestors, including many officials of compact associations, had phys-
ically obstructed the lictor responsible for beating Cho Kwangjo. In remarks
redolent of Chinese Communist party regulars after the death of Mao Tse-tung
about the damage and disgrace they had suffercd at the hands of the Red Guard
zealots during the Chinese Cultural Revolution, Yi Hang charged that Cho
K wangjo 's reforms had stimulated an influx of young men into the bureaucracy,
forced the removal of many older officials, and disrupted family relations and
social order by opening the door to a rash of criticism by sons, younger broth-
ers, and nephews against their fathers, elder brothers, and uncles. In other words,
moralist zealots had done more to destroy moral standards than the most
dcpraved members of society. Chief State Councilor Chong Kwangp'il also
accused compact officials with harboring fugitives from the purge, Kim Sik and
Ki Chun, on the grounds that they were only performing their moral duty to suc-
cor neighbors in trouble.
Chungjong agreed that they were only doing their moral duty, but Nam Kon
and Yun K wan acc·used them of treason, attacked the leaders of the community
compacts, and recommended that only scholars (saryu) be appointed heads of
community compacts in the future. Although King Chungjong did not ban the
community compacts, they disappeared nonetheless, and in 1537 Chungjong
admitted that the compacts had failed. 18
Community Compacts and Economic DevelopmentYi T'aejin has also claimed that since Cho Kwangjo, Kim Chongjik and their
colleagues and disciples (the sarimp 'a) represented the interests of the medium
and small landowners in the countryside, they were at once progressive supporters
of economic development as well as conservative opponents of the departure of
peasants from agriculture for the greater profits of commerce. Where Edward Wag-
ner brought the idealistic, heroic, and virtuous image of the Cho Kwangjo clique
down to earth by a sharp and judicious look at its politics, Yi T'aejin built upon
the traditional asscssment of Cho and his friends as moralistic and idealistic
martyrs by adding a modern touch of class analysis and economic progress. 19 He
thought that they advocated community compacts to expand irrigation but was
not able to find direct evidence to provc it.°O