426 MILITARY REFORM
it might be easier for the regular soldiers if they were left alone for the rest of
the year after serving their two-month shift, they would lose their military skills
without constant training. He advertised his solution as the middle way between
the extremes of excessive exploitation and underutilization.^90
Exclusion of Cavalry from Rotating Service. Yu also decided that for the six
southern provinces, the cavalry would train at home but, in contrast to the infantry,
would be excluded altogether from rotating service arrangements mainly because
the cost to the cavalrymen for maintaining their horses had been too expensive.
Instead, they would stand for the bi -monthly shooting examinations in their home
district and the spring and autumn general muster and bivouac training at the
regional command centers (chin' gwan), in accordance with regulations governing
the Special Cavalry Unit of the Military Training Agency (Pyoltae) established
in 1669. He justified his plan by arguing that cavalry on rotating service in the
capital would not be needed because he planned to retain the horse platoons
(madae) already on duty in the capital.
He also preferred not to assign them to the provincial military commander's
headquarters (Pyongyang) in the provinces as well because that kind of system
had already been proved a failure in the early Chason period. The cost to the
duty cavalryman of maintaining his horse at his duty station had been so great
that all cavalrymen had taken to renting or substituting horses despite laws against
it, so that in no time none of them had his own. Since it was ridiculous to treat
men as criminals for regulations impossible to observe, it was better to dispense
with rotating cavalry in the provinces altogether.
In case of a real crisis, cavalrymen could be rounded up with the sogo slave
soldiers, who also were to train in their home districts as a reserve force. The
only exception would be in the northern two frontier provinces, where cavalry
could serve on rotation with infantry and be provided horse fodder by the provin-
cial officials, who would have sufficient funds because the land tax was to be
kept on reserve in those provinces and not remitted to the capital. For that mat-
ter, even in the south, rotating service for cavalry might be instituted any time
there was a serious crisis, but it was far better to eliminate rotating duty during
peacetime to avoid the cost of having to provide extra support taxpayers for expen-
sive cavalry.9'
Excluding the cavalry from rotating service assignments indicated a serious
weakness in the system of finance through support taxpayers. When the evidence
available indicated to Yu that the financial support from these taxpayers had not
met the costs associated with keeping military horses, he chose to eliminate the
system rather than increase the number of support personnel for cavalrymen.
His solution appeared to reflect the prejudice of a cost-cutting civilian with
an ingrained bias against the military despite all his protestations to the con-
trary, particularly because he insisted on retaining rotating service for cavalry
along the northern frontier, where the threat of war was the greatest. Further-
more, it suggested that if he had no confidence in the financial capacity of the
support taxpayer system to support cavalry, why was he so confident that it could