SLAVERY 259
or ensuring accuracy in reporting, they demanded payments in excess of the legal
quotas as well as gratuities and transportation fees, continued to list runaways
and "bleached bones" (i.e., Gogol's dead souls) on the books. and demanded
payment from the relatives and neighbors of runaways.
King Yongjo tried to stem the corruption by shifting some of the responsi-
bility for registering slaves from the slave registrars to local magistrates in 1735,
but without much effect. He then adopted a provincial quota system (pich 'ongbOp)
in 1745 in some provinces for official slaves attached to central government
bureaus (slaves of the royal treasury were left under the jurisdiction of the reg-
istrars). By setting a fixed quota for a province it was hoped that this would elim-
inate the pressure on the provincial authorities to falsify registrations to raise
revenue. Since each district's slave tribute would be determined by the ratio
between its slave population and the total for the province, it was assumed that
the real number of slaves and runaways could be truthfully reported without
penalty. The system was extended to two other provinces in [764, and finally
to the whole country in 1778 when all registrars were abolished. Meanwhile, in
1755 Yongjo reduced the slave tribute rate by an additional one-halfp 'if per per-
son, a measure modeled after his reform of the commoner service system in J 750.
The government sacrificed revenue to alleviate the burdens on the tribute slaves,
but the continuing shortages of funds must have convinced an increasing num-
ber of officials that the system of state slaves and tribute payments was becom-
ing uneconomical and obsolete. 18~
Nevertheless, the system did not function as it was supposed to because mag-
istrates were lax and clerks took bribes to falsify the records.^189 In 1778, the
very year that the quota system was extended to the whole country, the gover-
nor of Cholla reported that the quota system resulted in forced exactions from
neighbors and relatives and false registration ofthe deceased. Furthermore, there
was no reduction of the category of royally granted slaves (sap ae nob i) given
to individuals by the king from the capital bureau slaves (sinobi). While Yongjo
cannot be blamed for the shortcomings of the quota system, he never intended
to abolish official slavery, merely to eliminate corruption and maintain the flow
of revenue from slave tribute. 190
Then in 1774 Yongjo adopted a recommendation by Kim Ongsun to abolish
the tribute of official female slaves employed in government agencies and post-
stations, and female shamans (mudang). He wanted to eliminate tribute levies
on private female slaves as well, but they were not included in the final edict.
The motive for the reform appears to have been a new awareness that levying
tribute on female slaves was improper. Yongjo had a scholar read through the
section on Kija from The Comprehensive Mirror of The Eastern Land (Tong-
guk t'onggam) to afllrm that slavery had begun in Korea only as a means of pre-
venting thievery. Since the levying of tribute on female slaves had begun
sometime afterward, he asked whether it would be appropriate or correct for
him to abolish tribute on both official and private female slaves? Won Inson agreed
it would be correct, not only because Kija never approved it. but also because