DEBATE OVER MILITARY TRAINING AGENCY 455
Crack Select Agency had to borrow rice from the Royal Division to make cnds
meet. The censors remarked that there was currently no national crisis that would
warrant depletion of military grain reserves just to support a new unit like the
Crack Select Soldiers, but if the king was reluctant to aholish it, at least he could
suspend all tours of duty at the capital for these troops until the next crop came
in, and eliminate the excessive number of personal aides of its officers.
The censors also charged that too much edible grain from the Ministry of War
was being consumed as horse fodder for the cavalry of the Forbidden Soldiers
(Kiimgun), the special or temporary guard units (Pyolkunjik), the Military Train-
ing Agency, and the Royal Division. They proposed that the horses could be let
out to pasture for the next five months until the fall harvest, allowing the trans-
fer of 5,000 sam to provide relief for several thousand starving people?R
The next month, Yi Wan, transferred to the post of commander of the Defense
Command (Su6sa), made a strong argument for a sharp reduction of military
expenditurcs in the face of the worst famine in a century, exacerhated by the
recent damage to the seed for the "double wheat [yallgmaek)" crop, which meant
the loss of the expected crop at harvest time. If miscellaneous lahor service were
demanded of the people while they were trying to get the harvest in. there would
be no telling how many people would die, and if military cloth taxes were
demanded on schedule from the tens of thousands of soldiers and support tax-
payers enrolled in the Military Training Agency and Royal Division, it would
cause them great hardship. These taxes should be canceled or reduced.
A censorate official, Yi Tanha, reported that since two-thirds (!) of the gov-
ernment's total annual expenditure of 120,000 sam of grain, or 80,000 sam, was
allocated for the support of soldiers, the king's guard should be cut by 3,000
men. Yi Wan, who had opposed the conversion of the Military Training Agency
to rotating soldiers and support taxpayers, now asked that the Crack Select Sol-
diers (who were also organized in that fashion) be eliminated entircly if the state
had any chance of saving itself from destruction. He claimed that the Ministry
of War's entire reserve of support tax revenues was spent on the Crack Select
Soldiers, leaving it without resources in case of emergency.
Yi explained that the Crack Select Soldiers had imposed an intolerable bur-
den on the state's resources because its ranks had been filled with sogo soldiers
from the provinces who had previously been self-supporting but now had to be
supported by the state treasury. He also complained about the financial drain
caused by an excessive number of salaried troops in the Military Training Agency.
Because of the current revenue crisis he advised that the king choose between
abolishing the Crack Select Agency altogether, reducing its size hy attrition, or
cutting its quota of troops. King Hyonjong respondcd hy authorizing the elim-
ination of "superfluous and miscellaneous" soldiers.20
The next month top officials and the Office ofthe Inspector General (Sahonbu)
recommended eliminating one regiment (pu) of the Military Training Agency,
temporarily suspending the rotating shifts of duty of the Special Cavalry Unit
(Pv<')ltae) of the Military Training Agency, and abolishing the post of Supreme