250 SOCIAL REFORMexaminations for talent in the military arts, a measure that Yu Hyongwon had
recommended. Slaves soon took advantage of this opportunity to gain manu-
mission by bribing officials to give them passing marks. 160
The most important route to freedom, however, was simply running away and
hiding from the slave registrars. There was a decline in the rate of recapture of
runaway slaves, and increasing laxity in the registration of slaves by district mag-
istrates, particularly outside-resident slaves, but private masters frequently sent
slave catchers out to roam around the provinces, ignoring the sixty-year statute
of limitations on the recapture of runaways. [6[
Outside resident slaves were classified as base or slave in status and legally
the property of their masters, but in fact they functioned as semiautonomous
tenants. Some of the slaveowners may have tolerated their gradual conversion
to good status as long as they continued to pay their rents, an interpretation sug-
gested by the transformation of official slaves from providers of labor to the
equivalent of tribute or rent-payers.
Of course, the shift in status did not occur in one direction only. Many com-
moners took on base status as a means of evading commoner tax and service
requirements as well. But the more rigid demarcations of status that character-
ized the early part of the dynasty began to decline, as reflected in the number
of complaints registered about the disrespectful behavior of slaves toward their
masters and betters. One official remarked in 176 I that official female slaves
could hardly be distinguished from commoner women since most of them lived
in the villages with their own families. [62
Thus a number of factors besides the matrilineal rule could explain why the
number of slaves in the population was declining and the line of demarcation
between commoners and slaves weakening, and the evidence on the effective-
ness of the matrilineal rule is mixed at best. There were some reports that sons
of mixed maITiages who should have been liberated by the matrilineal rule were
still being charged for slave tribute and other payments. On the other hand, there
was such a marked reduction of official slaves that there was a shortage of those
who owed special service as soldiers or post-station workers. Policy makers were
reluctant, however, to substitutc commoner hired labor (as Yu Hyongwon had
suggested), so they occasionally required children of such slave workers or sol-
diers to acquire both the status and occupation of their fathers, contrary to the
matrilineal rule. This was made obligatory for post -station slave workers in 179 I.
In fact, during one discussion at court over the shortage of official and post-sta-
tion slaves in 1761, Chief State Councilor Hong Ponghan, who was appalled by
what he felt was a violation of respect for status (my()ngblln) brought on by the
wholesale liberation of slaves under the matrilineal rule, argued for its aboli-
tion. Only when he was reminded by a colleague that he was arguing against a
long-standing policy of his own Patriarch's faction, did he come to his senses
and drop his objections.
As Chon Hyongt'aek has pointed out, even though the matrilineal rule had been
adopted to produce more commoners for labor service, it was again modified or