262 SOCIAL REFORMKorea), written between I7S6 and I7S8 in the style of Chu Hsi's T'ung-chien
kang-mu. 195 An had learned ofYu Hyongwon's work from his mentor, Yi Ik, and
even though the MunhOnbigo synopsis did not acknowledge the great debt that
An owed to Yu on the question of slavery, in the Tongsa kangmok itself An cited
most of Yu's major ideas and proposals on slavery from the Pan 'gye surok. It
was, in fact, after a lengthy quote ofYu's condemnation of hereditary chattel
slavery that An chose to place the most important statement of his own views.I note that hereditary slavery in our country is truly something that the govern-
ment of a true king could not stand. How could it be that once a person is
entered on the slave registers, [his descendants] can not escape slavery for a
hundred generations? There were slaves in ancient times and all of them had
been confiscated [enslaved by the state] because of thievery or banditry or were
pirate and brigands among the four barbarians who were captured, but the
penalty did not extend to their heirs, only to [the guilty parties] themselves. How
could there have been a law like that in our country?
Some say that the slave law began with Kija, but how could they take an evil
practice like hereditary servitude and mix it together with the rule of a sage who
had benevolent compassion for the people? Even though there is no clear state-
ment in the histories, I have found the origin of this evil practice beginning in
the Three Kingdoms period. During the Three Kingdoms the nobles and great
officials held power hereditarily, and of the three, Silla was the worst. The His-
tory of the T'ang Dynasty (T'ang-shu) says that the chief ministers of Silla had
permanent salaries and 3,000 slaves, from which we can tell how prestigious and
powerful they were. The poor and destitute, those without any means of support,
perhaps sold themselves into slavery or commended themselves to the powerful
so that their descendants suckled [at the breast of their masters] and were
employed [as slaves] in service. In addition war captives were confiscated as
slaves, were not able to purchase their freedom or obtain their release, and
served generation after generation without cease. This is how bad this evil
became.
When Koryo unified the country many of the enemies and rebels who were
conquered as war captives were given to the merit subjects to be their slaves or
assigned to the various official yamen. Thus, both private and public slaves
existed in name, and almost the whole population of the country ended up on the
private and public slave registers. There could have been no worse law than this.
The kings should have reformed or rectified it, but they did not have the time to
do SO.19^6An thus pushed back the origins of hereditary slavery from early Koryo to
the Three Kingdoms, but like Yu he criticized the policies of early Koryo for
exacerbating slavery in Korea. While Yu had neglected discussion of Kija, An
raised Kija's slave law directly and stated his belief that hereditary servitude