PART III CONCL USION 387standards. And it is quite possible that Tasan adopted this position at the tum of
the nineteenth century because he was either a Christian (or a reluctant Christ-
ian apostate) who had abandoned his unquestioning allegiance to Confucian
moral principles, and was thus looking for different (even alien) ideals.
SLAVERY
Yu Hy6ngwon was one of many scholars and statesmen in the seventeenth cen-
tury who attacked the system of slavery in Korean society, but although he agreed
with others on the instrumental value of reducing slavcry to increase the pool
of adult males available for military service and taxation, he was also the only
one to attack hereditary slavery on moral grounds as a violation of norms estab-
lished in classical China. His recommendation for adoption of the matrilineal
rule to determine the status of offspring in mixed marriages was debated by court
officials from 1669 to 1730 without knowledge of his ideas. and finally adopted
permanently in the end. Another partial victory was won in 1801 when King
Sunjo manumitted most of the official slaves.
Furthermore, for whatever reasons, the slave population appears to have plum-
meted precipitously after 1780, primarily because outside-resident slaves and
male slaves in general simply ran away. and it was cheaper to replace them with
tenants and hired lahorers than pay for the cost of an army of slave-catchers.
Whatever the reasons, most would agree that the decline of slavery was a sign
of progress, but there was no development of an abolitionist movement to out-
law slavery altogether. Nor can much credit can be given to Yu's statecraft suc-
cessors because none of them led any serious movement to abolish hereditary,
private slavery as a matter of moral principle, and even the most astute thinkers
like Tasan merely considered hiring slaves for labor to meet ad hoc labor short-
ages. Even Yu himself provided land for slaves in his land reform scheme on
the assumption that slaves would be around for a long time.
RATIONAL STANDARDS or MEASUREMENT (THE KYONG)
One of the most fundamental reforms that Yu proposed was replacing the kyi>l-
bu system of assessment with the linear kyong-mu system copied from ancient
China, and this idea was picked up readily by a number of his successors. Yu
should therefore be credited with transmitting an important way of rationaliz-
ing the measurement system, but unfortunately, the government never attempted
to adopt it.
The primary problem was not simply the technical question of easy mea-
surement, but the inequalities of ownership stemming from the market in landed
property,. the dispossession of smallholders, and the deterioriation of terms of
tenancy in the last part of the dynasty. Yu was convinced that the adoption of
more rational methods of measurement were bound to solve far more serious
problems, but I douht that it was true.