REDISTRIBUTING WEALTH 349
the Loyal and Righteous Guards or the Loyal and Ohedient Guards, then he is
entitled to treatment as a member of those guards," 1 13
Nevertheless, Yu did not mean by this that a rule of absolute equality between
legitimate sons and nothoi had to be followed, or that any form of distinction
or discrimination was improper. He remarked that the law of the dynasty stated
that nothoi werc ineligible to receive the um privilege from illustrious forbears,
but people were of two minds about how nothoi should be treated. Some thought
that current laws had to be strictly observed and nothoi excluded from the urn
privilege; others believed that it was improper to make any kind of distinction
between legitimate sons and nothoi (choklsO)."4 Yu felt that both extremes were
wrong: the rules governing the qualification for the um privilege to descendants
had to be uniform (that is, applied to both legitimate sons and nothoi), but there
was no reason why gradations or distinctions could not be made in the case of
nothoi. In one of his headnotes he stated that nothoi of the royal family, for exam-
ple, were given lesser noble titles than legitimate princes, so that distinctions
could also be made in conferring ch'in or royal relative status on not hoi. Stu-
dents in schools. however, had to be admitted solely in terms of their scholarly
ability and not pedigree (munji) or degree of noble or base status (kH'ichon).
Furthermore. since membership in the elite guard units should not be con-
nected with possession of the um privilege, he rejected a suggestion that one
way to draw a proper distinction between legitimate sons and nothoi who were
both entitled to the um privilege would be to deprive nothoi of the opportunity
for membership in the elite guards. He insisted that inheritance of the um priv-
ilege should be determined by its own set of rules; the elite guards was simply
an office or post that had nothing to do with the urn privilege. I IS
In summary, Yu's position on nothoi or merit subjects and high officials was
cautious and moderate. He believed that they were entitled to the lilll privilege
on the basis of their fathers' accomplishments, membership in the clite guard
units in the capital, admission to schools on the basis of their scholarly talent,
and allotment of a land grant of two kyong if they had the iim privilege (but not
double awards for both thc um privilege and student status).116 He conceded that
it was proper to reduce the eligible rank or grade for nothoi in some instanccs,
but he only provided a single example - the degree of ch'in royal blood rela-
tionship in determining the ranks of royal relatives.
The problem of nothoi was, of course, one of the outstanding examples of cus-
tomary Korean social discrimination based on inherited or ascriptive character-
istics. Whether the practice should be regarded as a manifestation of Korean
proclivities emhedded in the deep structure of their minds and attitudes. the prod-
uct of the political circumstances involved in the founding of the Choson dynasty
in I392 as Yi Sangbaek argued, or an attempt by the early Choson ruling class
to narrow access to thc top of society as Yi Songmu suggested, it would appear
that Yu Hyongwon thought ofthe practice as an illustration of a local custom rather
than as an ideal principle found in or derivable from ancient Chinese models.