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

136 SOCIAL REFORM

of the profits to be made from commerce, and the students merely registered at
the National Academy without bothering to study the ways ofthe ancient kings.
The solution was obvious - restoration of the full functional and productive char-
acteristics of ancient society and the return of the idle to productive jobs. All
the parasitic sinecured officials, which he estimated at one-third the total pop-
ulation. should be sent back to the farm.48
P'ei Tsu-yeh (467-528, Ch'i and Liang dynasties) complained specifically
of the evils of hereditary status because it contradicted the proper moral crite-
ria of merit:

The Book of History says, "People are treated as noble because they are close to

the ruler; there are no people who are born into the world as nobles." This means

that you should not care whether a man is a day laborer or a peddler if

he can he respected for his observance of the way and righteousness, and if he

is not the right kind of man. how could you select him I for office I just because

he comes from a lineage of scholar-officials [shih-tsu, sajok in Koreanpcl'i

He contrasted his own time with the relative social equality of the Han dynasty:
"Even the sons and grandsons of famous officials were still on a par with com-
mon scholar-officials in their cotton garb. Although a distinction was made
between officials and commoners, there was no major difference between the
prosperous families and the plain ones." By the end of the Chin dynasty, how-
ever, aristocratic family status (fa-yiieh, poryol in Korean) was all that counted;
the sons of the high and mighty looked down on the families of poor scholars
and despised local magistrates [of lesser status than themselves]. "What people
talked about was family line Imen-hu, munho in Korean] and what they discussed
had nothing to do with worth or ability .... " Even in his own time recommen-
dations and appointments were only made on the basis of status (fa, pol in
Korean).)O
The situation P'ei complained of was continued in the Ch'i dynasty (479-502)
in south China. Yu found that sons of high ranking families were given prefer-
ence over lesser families for official appointments, and everyone sought mar-
riages with influential familiesY Official appointments were made solely on the
basis of written records and genealogies of maternal as well as paternal rela-
tives of officials because no one bothered to conduct any investigation of can-
didates for office. Sons of the highest ranking families were appointed to office
as soon as they reached the age of twenty, and those from lower ranking fami-
lies were restricted to clerk's posts and given an examination to test their skills
when they reached thirty years of age. In the Southern dynasties in general the
emperor conducted no interviews of any candidate in advance to determine his
capacities and no agency ever reviewed the performance of officials in office.
Only occasional reformers like Wang Chien recommended that local magistrates
be chosen on the basis of their past records and support from local residents
rather than by remote officials in the capitalY