Confucian Statecraft and Korean Institutions. Yu Hyongwon and the Late Choson Dynasty - James B. Palais

268 SOCIAL REFORM

The decree also cited the reforms of previous kings, the reduction of slave
tribute by both Kings Sukchong and Yongjo, the latter's abolition of the slave
registrars (Ch'uswaegwan), and Chongjo's intention to abolish government slav-
ery fmstrated by his officials who failed to respond to his wishes. At present,
the decree concluded, the grievances of the slaves reached to the heavens; the
wind and rain had been put out of order and the ripening of the crops obstmcted

• all because slavery had not yet been abolished. Sunjo's prime task was thus
  to carry out the intent of previous kings to abolish [official] slavery. 208
  Sunjo's decree did not adopt Yu Hyongwon's approach to the origin and legit-
  imacy of slavery because Yu ignored the Kija slave law altogether. It was obvi-
  ously a blatant bit of sophistry invented by a clever government scholar under
  orders to reinterpret the Kija story, and yet the argument could not have been
  accepted by a sufficient number of educated scholar-officials unless the ground
  under the Kija myth had been weakened by scholars like Yu over a century before.
  Sunjo also had to deal with the revenue shortage created by the abolition decree.
  He originally ordered that the slave tribute payments to be lost by the abolition
  order would be made up by substitute payments and taxes from other sources,
  but there was only about three-quarters of the total of 80,000 yang of annual
  tribute cash available to offset the tribute due from the official slaves. Some
  arrangements were made for substitute payments for slaves of the various palace
  establishments as well. Since the official slave system already operated on the
  basis of tribute levies on slaves instead of actual service, it is possible that the
  abolition of official slavery meant in fact that the expenses of the central and
  local government offices and the various princely palaces would be henceforth
  paid out of general revenues or even specific funds. These funds would be used
  to purchase required materials, and the labor service could be performed either
  by hiring labor or requiring the labor service of ordinary commoners -an arrange-
  ment approximating Yu Hyongwon's proposals.^209
  The history of the eighteenth century shows a gradual trend in the reduction
  of the slave population produced by the growth of commerce, the conversion of
  service obligations to payments in cloth and cash, and increased movement and
  fluidity across village boundaries and previously rigid status lines. Ideas were
  undoubtedly influential in affecting these processes, and contemporary schol-
  ars have conceded that Yu Hyongwon and other rusticated scholars in the South-
  erner tradition, particularly those living in the Kiho region of Kyonggi and
  Ch'ungch'ong provinces, played an important role in the shift.^210

CONCLUSION

In 160 I, in the aftern1ath of Hideyoshi's invasions, one desperate official did in

fact call for the abolition of slavery to increase the size of the army, but once the

excitement born of crisis had died down, it became infinitely more difficult for

scholar-othcials to challenge the interests of their own class and the traditions

of a millennium.^21 I Nevertheless, changing social and economic circumstances