264 SOCIAL REFORMby the otherwise apparently laudable attempt to manumit illegally enslaved per-
sons because it would let slaves think that they were the equals, if not superi-
ors, of their masters.
Yu Hyongwon had also shied from suggesting immediate and total abolition
and proposed instead the gradual method of the matrilineal rule for virtually the
same reason if the cessation of hereditary slavery could not be mandated for the
next generation, but as An astutely observed by a choice quote from Yu's Pan'-
gye surok, Yu did believe that legislation by a bold king could transform soci-
ety. An was much more conservative, and confirmation of this appears in a
comment he made on the Koryo law adopted in 987 to return freed slaves to
base status (see the discussion ofYu Suwon's ideas, above). The royal decree
stated that "The longer that manumitted slaves have become good people [com-
moners], the more likely it is that they will treat their former masters with con-
tempt. If any of them should insult their former masters or challenge the master's
relatives. return them to slavery and servitude."
An appended his own commentary on this decree:
For a manumitted ex-slave to hold his former master in contempt is something
that ought to be dealt with severely by clear laws. Even though a person has
been liberated from slavery and made a good person [commoner], there can not
be any changing of names [i.e., positions, respect relations] between slave and
master. It was all right to put him [the disrespectful freedman] in awe and fear
[of punishment], but it was going too far to return him to slavery."'99While opposing the reenslavement of manumitted slaves, Yu still expected them
to treat their former masters with respect, an attitude common to the slaveown-
ing class of most slave societies. It did not matter whether An was talking about
a few freed slaves in a slave society, or the mass of freed slaves after a possible
abolition of slavery. In either case, he presumed that hierarchical status and respect
relations would be maintained in society even after slaves were freed. Ex-slaves
were not to get the mistaken idea they were as good as anyone else.
The attitudes of most Korean statecraft reformers were similar in one respect:
caught between contradictory feelings, their aspirations for reform of an obvi-
ous evil were ultimately checked by attachments to members of their own class;
they feared the potential of social chaos in a situation of unlimited opportunity
and mobility. Their advertised arguments for liberation and freedom from
bondage disguised a more fundamental elitism and status-consciousness.
Thus An shared Yu's ambivalence but not necessarily other aspects ofYu's
interpretations of and solutions for slavery. Although An cited Yu's reluctant
endorsement of the matrilineal rule as the means for the eventual elimination
of slavery, he himself did not endorse it, let alone Yu's appeal for ending hered-
itary slavery in the current generation.2oo He also chose not to emphasize Yu's
dictum about the equality of all men in their aspect as human beings as opposed
to chattel, and he appears to have rejected the idea that the use of hired labor