138 SOCIAL REFORMYu acknowledged, however, that Koreans who defended the existing ascrip-
tive social system used the argument that strict distinctions had to be made in
terms of myongbun, moral obligation, a term denoting the proper social status
that accrued to morally superior individuals. Nevertheless, this concept had been
distorted by applying it automatically to men of high birth rather than to men
of moral quality:
The moral obligation [to recognize status distinction) [myongbun) is a natural
principle of Heaven and Earth. How could one help but be strict about maintain-
ing it? In general, however, the so-called distinctions of social status basically
arise from the fact that we have grades between the noble and base, and nobility
and baseness [kwichon) basically derives from the difference between worthi-
ness and ignorance, and that is all there is to it.
At the present time we do not distinguish whether a man is good or bad.
Instead his nobility or baseness is determined exclusively in terms of how
exalted the official posts and rank of his forbears were, and yet we still say
that we are maintaining strict distinctions of social status.^55The ruling class in Korea was often referred to as yangban, but not all yang-
ban were bona fide members of the ruling class. The term yangban signified a
status designation for a core group of families with a long history of prominence
and usually with advantages over others in the possession of land, wealth, and
slaves, a pattern of restricted marriage with other families of like status, a strong
tradition of education and scholarship, domination of the civil service exami-
nations by a success rate far higher than average, and through it the acquisition
of public office, which was source of the highest level of prestige in society (see
chap. 2).
Nevertheless, since the maintenance and continuation of the families of both
the ruling class and the yang ban status group was dependent on periodic suc-
cessful performance (in the long history of a clan) in the state's civil service
examinations, the yangban could not be regarded purely as an aristocracy of
birth. Many yangban families remained shut out of success in the examinations
and officeholding; some of them retained yangban status nonetheless, while oth-
ers lost it. Since not all members of the yangban families were able to retain
wealth, land, or slaves over the generations, not all of them could necessarily
be deemed rich or well-to-do even though they fought to retain their dignity and
life style even in hard times. But those persons who did belong to yangban fam-
ilies certainly constituted the large majority of the ruling class, especially so at
the highest ranks of officialdom, even though it would be foolhardy at this time
to provide a specific percentage for all ranks since the research task would be
enormous.
In any case, Yu was not enamored of the hereditary aspects of the ruling class
(or the yangban if you prefer), and he sought to change its nature by a funda-
mental process of reform. He was firmly convinced that many of the members