230 SOCIAL REFORMalmost total reeducation to ordinary household tasks just to discharge their fil-
ial responsibilities. The population would have to be prepared in advance lest a
radical change cause more problems than it would solve.^86
In 1597 another official, Yi Chong'am, also stressed the difficulty in chang-
ing long-standing custom:
Even though Heaven's Mandate be changed [and a new dynasty established], the
customs of the country cannot be changed, and the moral obligations of social
status [myongbun] cannot be disrupted. Our country's method of the hereditary
transmission of private slaves has endured for a long time and become the custom.
Even the divine authority of T'aejo and the military might of Shih-tsu [Qubilai
of the Mongol YUan dynasty J were not able to repress or abolish it.Furthermore, he justified slavery as if it were an essential feature of the moral
hierarchy that governed society, and he complained that manumitting slaves in
return for grain payments could lead to the destruction of Korean society as it
was then known.~7
The famous early seventeenth-century statecraft writer often included among
the Sirhak scholars, Yi Sugwang, also complained that the Korean traditions of
social status discrimination and slavery, which he claimed had begun in Silla,
had been undermined by the easing of manumission through military merit and
purchase. Since some ex-slaves had even been able to attain high office, the result
was that slaves were looking down on the aristocracy, insulting their masters,
and even commiting rebellion and murder. There was no telling what would hap-
pen in the future. ~~
Thus, while necessity had relaxed somewhat the rules of the slave system,
elite opinion was generally opposed to the prospect of the erosion of status supe-
riority and frightened by the portent of a more egalitarian society. When King
Hyojong (r. 1649-59) noticed that the number of registered official slaves, which
had reached 350,000 in the late fifteenth century, had dropped to only 190,000,
and of these only 27,000 were available for either service or payment of "trib-
ute" taxes to state agencies, he was determined to prevent any further deterior-
iation of the official slave population by establishing in 1655 a General
Directorate for Slave Registration (Ch'uswae-dogam) to dispatch special slave
investigators (Ch'uswaegwan) to round up the runaways and recapture the slave
tribute revenue that had been lost. Much to his chagrin, the results were negli-
gible, and most of the slaves who were ferreted out were old and weak and inca-
pable of paying tribute to the state.^89 The attempt to rebuild the force of official
slaves to provide service and taxes for the state was not discontinued, but it began
to become obvious that it was more difficult to stop the loss of official slaves
by coercion and punishment.
In short, officials gradually became persuaded to find some method to increase
the number of commoner adult males for two reasons: to replace both the com-