Confucian Statecraft and Korean Institutions. Yu Hyongwon and the Late Choson Dynasty - James B. Palais

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758 REFORM OF GOVERNMENT ORGANIZATION

In short, despite the social and economic radicalism of his plan for reform of
the land system and elimination of the privileges of the yang ban, these elements
were not reflected in his community compact draft. In it he did not condemn social
status distinction or slavery and, in fact, he appeared to distrust the autonomy of
the community compact by calling for its domination by a wise magistrateY

The Hwangyo Community Compact of 1823

Tabana also found another text of a Hwangyo community compact that he pre-
sumes was dated in 1823 because it was based on the five-family system
(ogat'ong) that the dowager-regent during the beginning of King Sunjo's reign
had favored and also contained a condemnation of Christian books. The penal-
ties for violations in this compact were quite similar to the model established
by Yulgok because they contained a very detailed differention of five punish-
ments according to the status of the perpetrator.
For example, in the first degree, respected elders had to stand in the court-
yard without hats, elders had to endure a reprimand to their faces before all mem-
bers of the compact, commoners (chungdung, that is, chung'in and others) had
to strip to the waist and squat on the ground, and lower persons (slaves?) had
to suffer thirty strokes of the stick. These penalties were reduced for each stra-
tum for each of the other degrees of punishment. Elders and respected elders
could have their sons or nephews accept punishment in their place, or if they
had no such relatives, they could have one of their slaves beaten. Slaves that
were elderly or sick were allowed to pay a penalty as a substitute for corporal
punishment. Otherwise, despite some discrepancies of form and certain cere-
monies that appeared more suited for a school or religious meeting, the content
of this compact conformed to previous examples in other compacts, particularly
with respect to social discrimination.^38


The Hoeryong-gun Compact of 1819


At the end of the dynasty a number of officials wrote community compacts. A
magistrate, So Chiingbo, wrote one in 1866 modeled afterYu Hyongwon's ver-
sion; Han Changsok did one in 1890 based on the work ofYu, T'oegye, Yulgok,
and Cho Hon; Song Chaegyong composed one in Hwayang in 1904; Cho
Pyongsik reputedly did one in the capital in 1904. King Kojong ordered the com-
pilation of a text called Community Regulations (HyanghOn) in 1902 that con-
tained the wine-drinking and archery rituals and a community compact based
on Chu Hsi's version.
Finally, a fragment of a community compact from Hoeryong-gun in Ham-
gyong Province was published in Japanese sometime after the Japanese annex-
ation in 19IO, probably by a district magistrate of the colonial regime, and it
appeared to have been based primarily on the compacts designed by Yulgok and
Yu Hyongwon. It was designed to function in support of the magistrate since

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