COMMUNITY COMPACT SYSTEM 73Ithe lower person was to be beaten. If a yangban had no slave of his own and not
enough money to hire a substitute to perform duties required at a funeral, every
one in the community would have to contribute three mal of rice to be paid to
the bereaved family.
Hwang praised the clannishness of Korean social behavior, particularly the
sense of solidarity felt by all descendants of the single head of a clan or lineage
group, no matter how distant they were in the degree of blood relationship in
the current generation. He expanded the obligations of individuals beyond the
family to the clan and provided that failure to treat another lineage relative with
the respect due to a close family member would constitute a criminal act. Fight-
ing and altercation was condemned for all classes, whether it included disputes
over the pedigree (munji) of others among yangban or physical fights among
them and the lower persons (hain).
Hwang also bent traditional rules to provide mutual aid for the funeral of at
least the mother of a wife, a modification of Confucian rules that took into account
vestiges of matrilineality in past Korean social life. He justified it because in
recent years mutual aid had in fact been provided for the funeral of the parents
of a wife even if they lived in another village, if the husband involved had no
parents of his own. Nonetheless, since the compact community would not have
the economic capacity to pay for this if such events occurred too frequently, it
permitted such aid for a funeral only if the deceased mother of a wife lived in
the same village, even though it was not called for in the compact's regulations.
Sons would still be obliged to provide aid for the parents even if they lived in
another district, and if it were too difficult for one's father in the other district
to perform military service himself, members of the community compact would
contribute to a military service payment for a substitute or for destitute mem-
bers of the community who suffered a loss of a parent. If a widow had no chil-
dren, her brothers or nephews would be allowed to offer assistance to her.
Nonetheless, such exceptional acts of aid and assistance were not regarded as
the obligation of the community as a whole, but only to blood relatives.^45
Hwang appears to have been following in Yulgok's tradition of adhering to
Korean forms of social status discrimination in the rules of punishment for mis-
conduct. His rules did not reflect any weakening in the desire for physical pun-
ishment, but they did show more concern with Korean social customs, including
discrimination against nothoi and lower persons or slaves, and greater linger-
ing consideration for the female line of descent.
In 1632 Kim Seryong established the p'osan Community Compact when he
was magistrate of Hyonp'ung, and another one in Hamhung when he was gov-
ernor of Hamgyong Province between 1642 and 1644. The Hamh(mg compact
was the first Korean compact that incorporated the Six Edicts of Emperor T'ai-
tsu of the Ming dynasty, mentioned by Cho Hon after his trip to China in 1574.
It also stressed use of the pao-chia (pogap in Korean), the Ming and Ch' ing ver-
sion of mutual surveillance among families.^46