252 SOCIAL REFORM
percent in 1729 to 14-4 percent in 1867. The main reason for the decline in the
number of slaves was that about 50 percent or more in each of the four years
recorded had run away. The number who were manumitted by purchase, died,
or were sold by the owner was negligible. 170
Ellen Kim's study of the Sunch'on Pak lineage's slaveholdings in Myodong
shows that the lineage members residing there reached a peak of 889 in 1744,
and declined to 255 in 1786, after the direct descendant of the lineage, who owned
over 55 percent of the total number of slaves of that lineage in Myodong, moved
away and was no longer recorded on the household register. Even without the
largest slaveholder in the lineage, the slaves owned by the Sunch'on Pak in Myo-
dong increased to 365 in 1846 and to an unusually high 660 in 1858. The num-
ber of lineage slaves in Myodong dropped severely to the 30S in the 1870s, but
yet every household in the Sunch'on Pak lineage owned at least one slave, indi-
cating a much greater persistence of private slavery than the studies of Shikata
and others indicated.^171
Scholarly Critiques of Slavery
Even though Yu Hyongwon's recommendation on behalf of the matrilineal rule
did not influence its adoption by the government in 1669, his unpublished work
was circulated to a few and exerted an effect on some scholars in the eighteenth
century. At the same time a critical attitude toward slavery became more wide-
spread in that period than in the seventeenth century as part of a general trend
in thought.
Yi Ik (pen name, Sangho). The eighteenth-century statecraft scholar Yi Ik
(1681-1763), who admired Yu Hyongwon's work and deplored its neglect by
scholars, once singled out Yulgok and Yu as the only two men who really under-
stood the essence of government affairs since the founding of the Choson dynasty.
Like Yu, Yi also was forced into a life of scholarship because his father, a mem-
ber of the Southerner (N am' in) faction, was exiled, and his brother was executed
for treason in 1695 when he complained about King Sukchong's favorite con-
sort, Lady Chang. In fact, one could argue that the factional discrimination against
the Southerners had virtually forced some of their brighter members into a life
of scholarship and activated their concern with the injustices of Korean society.
Yi wrote a brief essay on slavery that stressed many key points raised by Yu:
the absence of any precedent for the Korean slave law in ancient times anywhere
in the world, the hereditary system that condemned a hundred generations of
descent from one slave to lives of suffering, the effects of the matrilineal rule,
not as a panacea, but as the means for perpetuating endless hardship on rela-
tives through the female line, the loss of human talent and ability that might oth-
erwise serve society's ends, and the harsh labor conditions of slaves in private
families. 172 Instead of advocating immediate abolition Yi accepted the view that
slavery could not be eliminated and proposed only that purchase and sale be
prohibited.