PART V CONCLUSION 765
not qualify for appointment to regular office. Despite these compromises his
attitude toward social discrimination was still far more liberal than that of his
contemporaries, but his ultimate goal was to escape contemporary Korean social
discrimination for what he regarded as the more benign condition of the late
Ming, as described by Cho Han.
FREEDOM VERSUS CONTROL
Finally, lest the reader construe that Yu's liberality connoted freedom from con-
straint in all forms, both from social and ideological restriction, keep in mind
his list of injunctions and penalties in his community compact regulations that
forbade not only discussion of heterodox ideas but of popular criticism of gov-
ernment action. For that reason his community compacts did not represent lib-
eration but conformity to ideas and ideals along with Confucian values and nonns.
Since the regular bureaucracy and their untutored clerks had not been able to
indoctrinate the public to the superiority of Confucian values, he hoped that a
tightly organized and voluntary organization of local people would provide the
institutional apparatus for the final, successful conversion of all the people to
moral norms.
BUREAUCRATIC REFORM AFTER Yu HYONGWON
There appears to have been little influence exerted by Yu's ideas for bureaucratic
reform until the decade of the Taewongun after 1863, but reality did not con-
form in all cases to his description of the situation. The kings of the seventeenth
and eighteenth centuries may not have been complete despots, but Kings Suk-
chong, YOngjo, and Chongjo definitely maintained their power even though they
were not willing or able to challenge the economic interests of the yangban in
any serious way. But in the nineteenth century, the power of the king was reduced
because of a succession of under-age monarchs dominated by dowager-regents
and the male relatives of queens. Since these relatives were all members of yang-
ban clans, the reduction of royal power did not mean the elevation of honest
bureaucratic administration, but rather the narrowing of opportunity as consort
families monopolized the best posts in the central bureaucracy. Thus, there was
no attempt to separate the royal exchequer from the king's nominal control and
place it in the hands of the Ministry of Taxation, or to remove control of the
palace estates of royal princes and princesses set aside for their benefit. While
this represented the continuation of royal excess, it did not also signify the apoth-
eosis of royal power -just the opposite.
Yu had called for the creation of a strong prime minister and the replacement
of the irregular Border Defense Command by a reconstituted State Council, but
this situation was not changed. The chief state councilor was hardly more impor-
tant than the councilors of the left and right, and the officials of the Border
Defense Command usually held concurrencies in the State Council, so that the