746 REFORM OF GOVERNMENT ORGANIZATION
itself. "How could anyone change an institution that has been carried on since
ancient times and abandon the normal seats where fathers, sons, and members
of the lineage are aligned, and create a new modus operandi that would destroy
the ceremonies of the rural villages and obliterate the teachings of the sages just
because some people might feel ashamed to be placed below someone else of
low or base status'?" T'oegye reminded Cho that "The world only respects three
things: viltuc, rank, and age. Because virtue and rightcousness wcre most impor-
tant in school [during Chou times], the princes of the Son of Heaven and the
sons of the feudal lords were selected and ranked by age along with the out-
standing [youth] of the common people. So much more should respect be based
on age in the local villages [hyangdang)."'4
T'oegye himself noted that he had been forced to compromise with current
reality because even though there were no official or private slaves in ancient
times (or so he thought), presently in Korea they existed and were not allowed
to attend schools or to participate in village affairs (in a formal way?), but with
respect to any other matter those of low or base status still had to be ranked
according to age because there was no other principle to follow. T'oegye thus
drew a subtle distinction of the conflict between the hierarchical standards of
respect and rank and the egalitarian standards of virtue and merit. Respect for
age had to take priority over respect for office and title, but it could only be fol-
lowed in certain situations whcre formal boundaries prevented the intrusion of
contemporary social norms, such as in schools or in community compact orga-
nizations. Yu Hyongwon probably believed in such a sentiment in general terms,
but he was forced to make certain compromises with Korean observance of inher-
ited social status. For that reason, he prescribed that slaves could not sit together
with commoners in formal compact meetings. 15
The Evil of PedigreeYu provided that the village kye registers (comprising two villages per kye in
his scheme) would record names of all members of the community whether they
were scholars or commoners, but their names would be recorded separately, and
slaves were not mentioned at all in this regulation. 16 The regulation reflected his
desire to replace the yangban with a meritorious elite of men of virtue who would
be trained through continuous observation by their seniors in the village and
teachers in his new official schools.
He prescribed that the compact association would require the keeping of a
register for the entire district of all officials and scholars (sabu), but he proba-
bly was using the term to mean the elite of his new society rather than the yang-
ban elite of his own time. Nevertheless, the men to be included in this list did
include some clements of hereditary status in contemporary Korean society just
as some of his other essays did. Royal relatives and sons of high officials who
possessed the protection privilege were included in the sabu along with incum-
bent regular civil and military officials, dormitory students in official schools,