502 MILITARY REFORM
creating a totally new system. He retained only certain elements of the new sys-
tem: the Military Training Agency (Togam, or Hullyon-dogam) and the capital
soldiers (kyongbyiing), which included the capital musketeers (p osu) and horse
platoons (madae), and finally, the sog ogun, to be composed in his system exclu-
sively of official and private slaves (not mixed with commoners as in contem-
porary practice). All other troop units established since the Imjin Wars, such as
the Royal Division - the model for his reformed duty soldier/support taxpayer
system of service - the Crack Select Soldiers (Chongch'ogun), the New Select
Soldiers (Sinson'gun), the Special Musketeers (Pyolp'osu), and the Special Cav-
alry (Pyoltae) of the Military Training Agency, were to be abolished. The Royal
Division was established in 1624, abolished, reestablished, and reorganized and
expanded in size in 1651. The Crack Select Soldiers were created some time
between 1638 and 1649, expanded and put under the Crack Select Agency
(Chongch'och'6ng) in 1668. The Special Cavalry Unit was established in 1669,
and then combined in j 682 after Yu's death with the Crack Select Soldiers to
form the Forbidden Guard Division (Kumwiyong). I
Yu did say that these units could not be abolished right away because at the
current time there was a surfeit of military examination passers (ch 'ulsin), who
obviously needed employment as officers in the above units. So he suggested
the units be eliminated by attrition, another indication of his trepidation at the
possibility of reactionary anger by members of his own class.
He also wanted to eliminate a number of types of soldiers who were not orga-
nized into discrete units but attached in small numbers to civil bureaus or mil-
itary units and headquarters. These included the military students (muhak), archers
(sabu), officers' personal aides known as the ivory soldiers (abyong), soldiers
conscripted directly by base and unit commanders or civil officials (mogul/),
and support slaves (pono). Although he intended to restore the military system
of early Choson, he specifically ruled out the miscellaneous units of that era as
well.^2 In short, Yu intended to reduce the number of duty soldiers overall and
confine the types of soldiers to five categories: regular cavalry and infantry, sago
slave soldiers, marines (sugun), and able-oarsmen. His goals was to rationalize
and simplify military organization and cut its cost.
Yu did not include the Defense Command stationed at the Namhan fort just
outside Seoul in the list of units to be dropped, possibly because that unit was
intimately involved in the politics and foreign policy of King Hyojong. Hyojong's
build-up of the Namhan fort and the Defense Command associated with it after
1649 involved important issues of politics, strategy, and even weapons policy.
He had appointed Yi Sibang, hawkish anti-Manchu rival of the late accommo-
dationist Kim Chajom, commander of the Defense Command in 1651, and then
carried out the reassignment of troops to it and the Namhan fort that had been
requested byYi's father, Yi Kwi, and blocked by Kim Yu in years past. Since the
troops assigned to the fort from Taegu and Andong had not been able to reach
the fort before the Manchus did in the invasion of 1637, Yi Sibang recommended