478 MILITARY REFORM
and hardship, but Hyojong asked why the resentment and hardship of the poor
peasants who were forced to run away from their homes because of military
service were any less to he feared than that of the sajok. "If you want to do some-
thing, you cannot talk about the resentment and hardship [that might be suffered
by] some [a minority of privileged?] people."
Second State Councilor Won Tup'yo remarked that the suffering of the sol-
diers and people had never been worse than at the present time. If reform were
not carried out at a time like this, when could you ever do it? But Sim replied
with a strong defense of elite interests: "What maintains our country is the power
of the sadaebu. If we now were to suddenly do something that has never been
done before and impose a cloth tax on them just the same as that on common-
ers [soin], would their resentment not indeed be great?"
There was an alternative, however. The government could collect a cloth pay-
ment from all regular officials, the amount to vary by rank. and if this were not
sufficient. additional funds could be obtained from the reserves of the provin-
cial governors and army and navy commanders' yamens.
A number of other officials were either opposed or reticent. Some proposed
using the household tally system (hop'ae) or the five-family mutual responsi-
bility and surveillance system (oga chakt 'ong) as a better means of ensuring full
and accurate registration of all eligible males for military service and taxes. Song
Siyol, then minister of personnel, remarked that he had previously discussed Yu
Kye's ideas with him and felt that a bill of particulars should first be drawn up
for consideration before final decision was made.
Even Yu Kye retreated somewhat from his first position in the face of the open
criticism. He told the king that in any case the imposition of a tax on the yang-
ban families was not something that could be done by force. The king would
have to make clear just what the purpose of the law was to be, but if any of the
yangban were not willing to make cloth payments, they definitely should not
be forced to do so. Cloth payments were only to be voluntary, but since such
payments would be compensated by exemption from all future military service,
the yangban who refused to make payments after the law was passed would regret
it in the future when the government might require them to serve on military
duty and be listed on the military registers. He was still convinced, however,
that his proposal provided the perfect solution: by having those living in idle-
ness and lUXury pay cloth, the arms-bearing soldiers would be absolved from
any payment of cloth levies. In the end, however, Hyojong concluded that the
proposal was too serious to adopt so suddenly. 18
ELIMINATING SLAVE EVASION AND THE MATRILINEAL
RULE, 1655Hyojong showed less aversion, however, to taking action against slaves dis-
covered paying less than their due, When, for example, Minister of Taxation Yi
Sibang reported in 1655 that only 27,000 of the 190,000 government slaves reg-