SLAVERY 26rwere supposed to be living and registered in their home villages in the coun-
tryside and liable for service or tribute payments, but many had run away. When
the officials shifted the burdens to neighbors and relatives, that forced more peas-
ants out of their villages. 192 Something had to be done to stop the oppression of
these people, stem the tide of migration, secure the stability of the villages, and
guarantee the funding of the government's needs.Spread ofYu 's InfluenceThe Munhonbigo Revised, 1782. It was in the midst of these difficulties that
the r 782 revision of the Munhl5nbigo, the encyclopedia of important institutions,
was completed by Yi Man'un, who cited Yu's ideas on slavery in two places.
The first was inserted by Yi as a fitting commentary to the matrilineal rule of
I039 in the Koryo dynasty. Here Yu had said that it was bestial to have a rule
that one's mother rather than father would determine a child's status, but because
it had unfortunately become the national custom to treat persons of base status
like animals anyway, and the patrilineal rule would only lead to endless law-
suits, there was no better alternative than the matrilineal rule. In any case, Yu
said, the problem was not the matrilineal rule; it was the slave law itself. For
even after the matrilineal rule was adopted, children of women of good status
were still forced to adopt their father's base status. "This is a law that is no law,
the only purpose of which is to force people into base [statusJ. Of all unjust laws
it is the worst."'93
It is not clear why Yi Man'un chose this part of Yu's writings to put in the
encyclopedia since the matrilineal law had been permanently adopted in 173 [.
Maybe he was trying to highlight its defects rather than its advantages because
several of the Yu's negative assessments had actually taken place.
Yi Man 'un"s second citation of Yu's ideas on slavery was his indictment of
hereditary slavery on the grounds that there was no precedent for it in ancient
times. Under Korean law, hy contrast, guilt or innocence was not even at issue
because base or slave status was inherited. 194 Even though Yi did not highlight
Yu's main source for this view, the Rites of Chou, Yu's refutation of any classi-
cal justification for hereditary slavery must have contributed to the growth of a
critical attitude toward habitually accepted ideas and prepared the ground for
the liberalization of Korean slave laws. Possibly it influenced King Yongjo to
reread the text of Kija's slave law in a critical light. Unfortunately, Yu's novel
views about the equality of men and the use of hired labor were not included in
the Munhonbigo, but some of the leading scholars and officials must have been
familiar with them (as the following section shows), even though the text of the
revised Munh6nbigo was not printed in type until 1908.
An C/u)ngbok. The same 1782 revision of the Munlulnhigo also included a
brief synposis of An Chongbok's account of the history of slavery and his own
condemnation of the institution, culled from An's multivolume survey of Korean
history, the Tongsa kangmok (Major and Minor Points about the History of