SLAVERY 215tional Korea became prominent because of King Kwangjong's attempt to
expand central power. After his death in 982, the famous Confucian scholar-
official Ch'oe Srmgno criticized some of Kwangjong's measures to bolster royal
prerogative at the expense of the slaveholding interests of the high officials,
landowners, and nobles. Ch'oe pictured T'aejo as a protector of the private prop-
erty interests of the merit subjects and social elite because he had refrained from
the manumission of enslaved war captives, even though he had tried to pry away
some portion of the slave population from the slaveowners. The slaveholding
elite had been satisfied for over sixty years until King K wangjong had upset the
balance in 956 by ordering an investigation of all slaves in the empire. Ch'oe
took umbrage at Kwangjong's interference with slaveholding property rights
even though the purpose of the investigation was not to abolish slavery, but merely
to return to commoner status all persons illegally enslaved by force or foreclo-
sure for debt. He held that the consequence of K wangjong 's action was to weaken
the moral basis of slavery because he felt that the slaves lost their respect for
their masters, lorded it over their superiors, and conspired and plotted their mas-
ters' downfall. He was referring to their eager participation in the rash of calumny
and accusation that prevailed during Kwangjong's purges of his political ene-
mies. Slaves were a treacherous lot, anyway, only too happy to betray their for-
mer masters for the slightest personal advantage. In other words, by Chinese
legal tradition, slaves had been prohibited from accusing or testifying against
their masters in any cases save treason, but K wangjong had tolerated it as means
of purging his political rivals. Ch'oe urged King Songjong to stop this practice
and maintain the proper distinction between masters and slaves.^27
Ch'oe's remarks show that in the political and economic struggle between kings
and aristocrats in the tenth century, even though Confucians were frequently on
the side of the kings, they were never proponents of royal absolutism and their
primary loyalty at that time was to the aristocracy of slaveowners, whose mate-
rial interests they defended in moral terms.
The Matrilineal Succession Rule of I039In 1300 when the Yiian (Mongol) authorities demanded of King Ch'ungnyol that
he limit slavery in Korea, they did not want to abolish slavery altogether, but
rather to allow offspring of mixed slave/commoner marriages to be freed and
given "good" or commoner status, in conformity with current Yiian dynasty prac-
tice. A matrilineal succession rule, by which offspring of mixed marriages adopted
their mother's status, had in fact been decreed in 1039 in Korea, but it was ignored
in practice. When King Ch'ungnyol opposed the Mongol request, he informed
the Yiian authorities that in Korea the children of mixed marriages inherited base
status if either of the parents were base, and he pointed out that the previous
Yiian emperor, Shih-tsu (Qubilai), had chosen to abide by native Korean cus-
tom and laws back in r 270, when the Korean king had finally acknowledged
submission to Mongol rule.^28