744 REFORM OF GOVERNMENT ORGANIZATION
and heavier ones for "lower persons," he had to be referring to the yangban and
slaves of Korean society,
Hwang Chonghae, who wrote the regulations for his community compact in
I 64 I and presumably borrowed Yulgok's concept of differentiated punishments,
referred directly to yangban and slaves rather than scholars and lower persons.
He was possibly reflecting a more intense perception of inherited privilege in
the mid-seventeenth than the mid-sixteenth century, as Yu Suwon had argued in
the early eighteenth century. Yulgok had thus reversed the emphasis on age as
the only legitimate basis for the treatment of individuals in the context of the
community compact's functions, and reflected the power of hereditary status in
Korean social life.
In his compact regulations on ritual events, however, Yu Hyongwon sought to
affirm the emphasis on age over status in the compact tradition of the Sung
dynasty, and he set the standards of behavior required of individuals towards
others in prescribed situations according to the five categories of age relation-
ship between ego and alter described in the Lii-Family Community Compact.
For example, when a "youth" was paying a courtesy call on a "respected one,"
he had to be wearing a silk gauze hat and formal outer wear, dismount his horse,
inquire whether the host was eating, entertaining other guests, or engaged in his
own affairs before requesting entry, and present one's name card at the gate. The
host would have to reciprocate by sending out a servant to receive the card,
descend the stone steps outside his house, or not, depending on the status of his
caller. During more formal visits, the number of bows and the attitude of the
host was prescribed according to the relative obligations of host and guest.
Congratulatory visits and condolence calls, including funerals and mourning
visits, required the head of every household that belonged to the village com-
pact association to call on the affected party, or to present gifts of food, cash,
or other goods on felicitous occasions. Even conduct at informal parties had to
be governed by strict regulations on the positioning and location of wine cups,
the pouring of the wine, the presentation of the wine to guests, the direction
toward which host and guest will bow, and the mutual exchange of toasts. The
secretary (the Chigwol) was obliged to report any violators to the head of the
association (Yakchong).
Additional degrees of respect were prescribed for visitors or members who
might happen to be royal relatives or members of the central bureaucracy with
official rank, but otherwise the seating order of individuals at meetings or con-
vocations had to be arranged strictly according to age. In no instance did con-
siderations of social status playa role in these regulations. 12
There is evidence, however, of the influence of social pressures for the obser-
vance of status in the seating arrangements of compact members during the pub-
lic recitation of the regulations of the compact either at the local school (hyanggyo)
or at the Local Archery Hall (Hyangsadang). Yu's regulations specified that the
seating positions of members were to be determined by the age of ego relative
to the Yakchong under the five categories of the Lti-Family compact, but official