SLAVERY 233descendants of even legitimately enslaved criminals, captives, or bandits were
condemned to an unwarranted servitude. He was also challenging the commonly
held misinterpretation of Kija's laws that the enslavement of ordinary thieves
legitimated hereditary slavery for their innocent descendants.
It certainly appears that Yu simply accepted the validity of ancient Chinese
precedent rather than seeking any new standard of judgment based on the power
of human reason. If he had intended by his research to produce a thorough and
objective account of slavery as an institution. he might have tried to find evi-
dence for the tolerance of inherited servitude in the Chou as well as the Han,
but he either failed to discover it or suppressed it to make his case against hered-
itary slavery.
Yu began his treatment of the Han period by listing acts of manumission of
slaves either by imperial decree or humane officials to illustrate the benign con-
cern of the Han emperors. 100 Even though the first call for the outright aboli-
tion of slavery in Chinese history was proposed by Tung Chung-shu to Emperor
Wu (ca. 140-93 fl.C.), Yu did not make Tung's unequivocal appeal for total abo-
lition the cornerstone of a radical abolitionist policy. possibly because it would
been contrary to the Chou practice of enslaving criminals and war captives.lol
In his brief discussion of the T'ang period, Yu cited materials on two issues,
the T'ang system of triple pardons (sammyon) for official slaves and debt slav-
ery.I02 Although he did not comment on these issues, we might safely deduce
that his silence signified at least limited approval of the T'ang system of grad-
ual reduction of slave status even though the T'ang system of graded manumission
was probably less beneficial to slaves than the Han dynasty system, where man-
umitted official slaves became commoners immediately without suffering lim-
ited disabiities. Both were more liberal than the hereditary slavery of Korea. 103
Although Yu did not comment directly on cases ofliberation of slaves from debt
slavery that was proposed in the T'ang and Sung dynasties, he obviously
approved of the policy because the enslavement of innocent commoners was
contrary to a principle established in antiquity.
The Reform of Slavery in KoreaThe Causes and Consequences of Slavery. Applying the lessons he learned
from China, Yu arguedlO 4 that in ancient China only those guilty of a crime were
enslaved, and even in those cases the penalty was not extended to their descen-
dants. Certainly those innocent of any crime were never enslaved, and even in
the T'ang dynasty slavery was never extended to the descendants of those who
had been penalized by enslavement for life. 105
Yu was disturbed that Koreans were totally unconcerned whether or not slaves
had merited their lowly status because they had committed a crime. Because
the only basis for the determination of slavery was if an individual had a slave
in his family tree, even men of worth and talent had been condemned to slav-
ery without any consideration of their qualities as people. 106