DEBATE OVER MILITARY TRAINING AGENCY 451
at the capital before they were able to find support taxpayers would still be paid
rations on a temporary basis by the Ministry of Taxation. 18
Later in the year Ho Chok reported that the recruitment of new soldiers for
the Military Training Agency was going well because the men had heard that
the new soldiers would be organized along the lines of the Royal Division. [n
fact, the reputation of the agency was so bad that Ho recommended changing
the name. At Yu Hyogyon's suggestion, the title, Special Unit of the Military
Training Agency (Hullyon-byoltae) was chosen. 19
Part of the reason why recruitment for the special unit was successful was
because the new commander of the agency, Yu Hyogy6n, was personally dis-
patching his own aides to the countryside to conduct an unauthorized investi-
gation of unregistered males (hanjong) who were evading service. They sent
back sccret lists of such men, and the agency then dispatched formal notifica-
tion to the district magistrates where the men lived to investigate whether they
had service obligations or not Obviously, yangban tax evaders were the ones
who suffered most from this tactic, and they made their discontent known to the
authorities, for the Office of Censor-General (Saganwon) impeached Yu for his
illicit methods and demanded his punishment Hyonjong, howcver, rejected the
request.^20
Hyonjong's final decision, therefore, was to create the new Special Unit of the
Military Training Agency and staff it with rotating soldiers and support taxpay-
ers rather than permanent, salaried soldiers, with the expectation that the salaried
soldiers of the agency might be reduced as men were signed up for the special
unit. This policy was essentially H6 Ch6k's modification of Song Siyol's rec-
ommendation for immediate abolition of the agency, but it was a very modest
reform limited by the paltry number of hanjong that could be found to recruit
for the new unit, yielding only I27 duty soldiers at any given time.
The historian of the Sillok who penned his opinion some years later remarked
that everyone at court agreed with men like Yi Tanha and Song Siyol who wanted
to eliminate the Military Training Agency because of its high cost and the low
quality of its troops. Hyonjong, however, was opposed to abolishing an old unit
and was only too happy to establish a new one because his primary concern was
building up military strength.lI
The assessment was correct, but it only covers part of the story. King
Hyonjong's policy was quite close to Yu Hyongwon's thinking on the question:
retain the Military Training Agency because it was essential for training sol-
diers in the most advanced methods of weaponry and organization in use in
Ming China (even though those methods were not sufficient to save China from
the Manchu conquest of 1644), but convert the system of financing the agency
by replacing tax support from the Ministry of Taxation with support taxpayers
from the commoner population, The only difference was that when Hyonjong
realized that it was not possible for him to find enough adult males to register
as rotating duty soldiers and support taxpayers, he created a special unit based