518 MILITARY REFORM(sahuson). The warship was a masted brig of war with a crew of 80 boatmen
and oarsmen, and 77 musketeers (p osu) and archers (sasu). He listed a total of
12,500 marines for naval garrisons for the southern provinces, leaving the north-
west to future determination.^46 Although the hierarchic system of quotas appears
rather simple in conception, it constituted a major reform since the complement
of ships, troops, and sailors in some places in the existing system bore no rela-
tion to the strategic importance of the location.
Yu was hard pressed to devise a solution for recruiting a full complement of
marines and oarsmen because he estimated that no more than 10 percent ofthe
existing quotas were actually filled, and there were hardly enough sailors to run
the ships during training periods. He was reluctant to authorize the use of pri-
vate slaves for marines, probably because they were either domestic servants or
cultivators unused to fighting at sea. He also insisted on adhering to the princi-
ple of recruiting naval personnel from the inhabitants of seacoast towns. He solved
the problem by suggesting that men of good status be used as naval soldiers,
while slaves and men without land grants would be oarsmen. Contrary to cur-
rent practice, marines would have support personnel to provide them with monthly
grain rations like land troops, and the soldiers would be divided into shifts that
rotated on and off duty. He stipulated periodic testing of skill, elimination of
frequent transfers, and punishment for commanders who exempted men from
duty in return for cloth payments.
Someone must have suggested to him that since it would be impossible to
guarantee that naval commanders in distant locations would not release their
men in return for cloth payments, it would be preferable to reduce the duties of
the marines, use them as servants and runners of the garrison commanders, and
save funds by reducing the number of their support personnel. But he was adamant
in insisting on providing rations and preventing exemptions and subsitute cloth
tax payments, the two major reasons in his view why the naval garrisons were
lacking full complements of personnel in his own time.
If people are exempted from military service and [soldiers] have their grain and
cloth rations cut off, then the people living in the areas near the garrisons will
gradually leave the area, and within a decade all the garrisons will become deso-
lated. After a long period of time goes by, all the posts of the border [coastal]
comillanders will he held in low esteem, and they will be regarded as no more
important than the present day village constables.^47Furthermore, he called for the cessation of the practice of using garrison naval
soldiers and personnel for transporting local products like bamboo and wood to
capital headquarters. Instead, all such items would be handled by the new tae-
dong system by which district towns remitted grain surtaxes to the capital for
thc purchase of such items.^48
Unfortunately, the tragic aspect of his criticism of the Chason navy in his own