Yu's COMMUNITY COMPACT REGULATIONS 755and the second the Middle and Lower Kye (chunghagye) with commoners and
slave members. The Middle and Lower Kye had to stand when listening to the
recitation of the compact regulations in the colloquial language, but the yang-
ban in the Upper Kye could remain seated when listening instead to a recitation
of the Lti-Family compacP' For a scholar reputed to have been an intellectual
follower of Yu, An looks more like a defender of the status quo rather than a
social radical.
Village Granary Regulations, 1757. An's regulations for the village granary
(sach 'ang), drafted in 1757, was intimately tied to the community compact. The
head of the compact was simultaneously director of the village granary, and other
officials of the compact performed duties in the granary. In his preface to the gra-
nary's regulations, he discussed the history of ever-normal price stabilization poli-
cies in China since the Han dynasty, righteous granaries for relief in villages in
the Sui dynasty, and Chu Hsi's village granaries for emergency loans in the Sung
dynasty. He acknowledged that the village granary system had developed prob-
lems over time, but he blamed it on the people who ran them, not the system
itself. He mentioned that while the Korean hwanja grain-loan system appeared
similar to the village granaries, in fact it was much closer in spirit to Wang An-
shih's green-shoots system ofloans. He also regretted the failure of the ever-nor-
mal system to function effectively even though it was included in the Kyongguk
taejon law code of the fifteenth century. He did not bother to include the lead-
ing advocates of community compacts in his recitation of their history, but his
regulations were quite similar (and often identical) to those made by Yulgok, who
combined the community compact and village granary in his regulations, and to
Yu Hyongwon's program to abolish the hwanja loans and adopt the ever-normal,
village granary, and community compact systems at the local level.
Nevertheless, An did not advocate that these village granaries be adopted at
the national level, at least not until a sage ruler appeared who would have the
capacity to do it. Tabana has concluded that An originally did not design the vil-
lage granary to operate in conjunction with the community compact and only
added it the next year. Like Yulgok and Yu Hyongwon, An Chongbok designed
the granary to operate at the subdistrict or county level and probably did not
succeed in carrying it outY
Yu Hyongwon did not influence An's thought as much as Chu Hsi, Yulgok,
Hwang Chonghae, and even Ming T'ai-tsu whose Six Edicts he included in the
text. Although usually counted as a prestigious member of the Sirhak scholars,
An's conservative defense of social status seems to have hardly been different
from the mainstream of social thought throughout the dynasty. Although he was
willing to punish yangban for violations of propriety, he had no desire to level
the privileges of status nor alleviate discrimination against slaves or nothoi of
yangban.
Village Kye for Moral Education in 1776. When An was appointed magis-
trate of Mokch'on-hyon in Ch'ungch'ong Province in 1776 he was shocked by
the unrestrained behavior of the local residents, and sent out a directive to each