720 REFORM OF GOVERNMENT ORGANIZATIONlagers and close relatives engaged in constant disputes. If someone from the vil-
lage happened to reach high office, he only engaged in corruption, neglected
his official duties, and used orders from the king as an excuse for cruel exploita-
tion of thc common people. The whole basis of morality - filial respect for par-
ents and and loyal obedience to the ruler - was lost.
Cho recounted an incident illustrating the effectiveness of the community com-
pact as a model for moral instruction. In 1519 a poor man living in Yongbyon
in the north had to abandon his father in a ditch because he did not have enough
food to feed him, but when he heard that King Chungjong had just promulgated
the text of the community compact to the nation, he turned on his heel, returned
to rescue his father, and continued to support him through the rest of his life.
Unfortunately, even though the text of the community compact had been pub-
lished and distributed throughout the country just last year, it was only gather-
ing dust on book shelves. Since there seemed to be no one with the capacity to
seek goodness without waiting for the king's instruction, he advised the king to
emulate Ming T'ai-tsu's example by ordering all district magistrates to inform
the elders of their districts about the community compacts, and have the village
headmen (Ii-cheng) advertise its advantages to the people.
Although Cho agreed that the economic needs of the people (yangmin) had
to be met before adopting the community compact system, he also pointed out
that at the present time the economy was not in bad condition and moral edu-
cation could not neglected. A son had to be taught that during a famine it was
wrong for him to strip the clothes off his father to protect himself from the cold,
and a younger brother needed to learn not to steal his elder brother's food to
assuage his own hunger. If people were not instructed about these things in
advance, they might commit these criminal acts and suffer punishment at the
hands of the authorities. Punishing the guilty without providing the people with
moral instruction in advance was tantamount to entrapment, a policy that no
person with the humane instincts of the enlightened Confucian could tolerate.
Cho insisted, contrary to the earlier proposal of the Ministry of Rites, that
there were enough decent officials at court and men of good character in the
countryside to run community compacts. If the king could wait until an abun-
dant crop was harvested to guarantee economic security to the people, it would
then be possible to achieve the successful adoption of the community compact
system.^29
Cho was tremendously impressed by what was left of the methods of local con-
trol and moral indoctrination created by Ming T'ai-tsu in the fourteenth century.
EmperorT'ai-tsu came from the peasantry, identified with the troubles and inter-
ests of the downtrodden, and attributed the cause of peasant misery to the offi-
cials, clerks, and landlords of the late Yiian period. He cracked down on corrupt
magistrates, often hauling them in groups to the capital for severe punishment,
and he instituted a bold system of local government based on the li-chia, units
of I IO households under the leadership of the ten wealthiest (not most virtu-
ous!) families. These families controlled ten households each and took respon-