EPILOGUE IOI9the tax system. But the desire to demonstrate progress has shifted attention away
from the domination of agriculture, the maintenance of yangban power, and the
influence of Confucian statecraft concepts on the thinking of the educated class.
Confucian statecraft ideas were by no means translated directly into policy
choices, as this book should make clear, but the emphasis on the moral basis for
government never lost force even while the state was losing ground to human
weakness, corruption, and immorality. The ultimate goal of producing a moral
order according to Confucian standards was maintained. The primacy of agri-
culture and the fear of the immoral consequences of commerce and the profit
motive were still deemed important, but not enough to blind the vision of Con-
fucian officials and scholars to some advantages of economic activity. Despite
the growth of the commercial economy, merchants and artisans were still few
in number and too weak to challenge the predominance of the yangban fami-
lies who monopolized education, dominated the upper bureaucracy, and con-
trolled the chief source of wealth, land and agricultural production.
Finally, the locus of statecraft ideals remained the institutions of Chinese antiq-
uity described in the Chinese classics; the chief source of wisdom in the con-
duct of practical statecraft was the immense literature on Chinese history and
institutions; the main prop of Korea's security was still the protection afforded
by the suzerain state, the Manchu Ch'ing dynasty, until the Sino-Japanese War
of 1894. These elements may be lugubrious reminders of subjugation to foreign
culture for modern Korean nationalists, but they also are symbols of the mem-
bership and participation of the Korean Confucians in a world much broader
than the confines of the Korean peninsula, governed by levels of complexity and
civilization far higher than most in world history.