MILITAR Y REORGAN IZATION 503
that almost all the soldiers from Ch'ungch'ong and Kyongsang provinces
assigned to the post be replaced by men from Kyonggi Province.
This measure certainly made rational sense, but building up the Namhan fort
was of little practical value if the aim of Hyojong's policy was to attack
Manchuria. One suspects that despite the rhetoric of Hyojong and his anti-
Manchu supporters at the time, the purpose of the Namhan fort was twofold: a
last place of refuge for a beleaguered king holding out against a third Manchu
invasion, or a command center for a king under siege by his domestic political
enemies.3
Defense of the CapitalRestoration afthe Five Guard SYstem. Yu wanted to reorganize the royal and
capital guards because he was concerned about the inefficiency of the units and
the flnaneial drain on the state treasury by an excessively large force of capital
guards, some of whom were permanent, salaried soldiers. He learned from Chi-
nese experience that long-term troops on salary tended to increase in number
and impose a serious tax burden on the state. Emperor T'ai-tsung of the T'ang
began with an imperial guard of only one hundred cavalrymen, but by the late
seventh century under Empress Wu it had grown to a thousand, and by the tum
of the eighth century, ten thousand. Then they became permanent long-term impe-
rial guards, but the T'ang court was no longer able to control them, they were
unable to repress rebellion, and the dynasty fell. The situation could be con-
trolled by wise rulers if they took care to set quotas on permanent, or long-term
capital troops in particular.
The number of capital guards had to be determined hy the amount of avail-
able resources. If there were sufficient tax revenues to pay for ten thousand troops,
then the limit should be set at four or five thousand 10 ensure a surplus of funds.
Since Korea was much smaller than China, a force of one or two thousand per-
manent, capital soldiers would be more than enough. Since duty soldiers had to
be provided enough support to make them effective, it would not pay simply to
cut their support. The only acceptable method was to cut the number of troops
to provide tax relief for the support taxpayers.4
Yu proposed a plan to divide the capital forces into a capital guard and a small
number of royal guards and specialized units like gate guards. patrols, and police.
To achieve this he wanted to abolish the Royal Division and restore the Five
Guard (Owi) system of the early Choson period. All soldiers of the Five Guards
as well as those of the Military Training Agency would be organized under the
system of rotating service and support taxpayers currently in use in the Royal
Division. Yu claimed that the two organizations (Five Guards and Military Train-
ing Agency) would complement each other like the inner and outer lining of a
coat (i.e .. guarding the areas inside and outside the walls of the capital) in con-
forn1ity with the Northern and Southern Armies (Nan-pei chiin) of the Han