Confucian Statecraft and Korean Institutions. Yu Hyongwon and the Late Choson Dynasty - James B. Palais

530 MILITARY REFORM

service from starving peasants was a cruel injustice, was similar to the Confu-

cian admonition that Yu had advertised in his own writing, about refraining from

demanding labor from the peasants during the planting and harvesting seasons.

This Confucian spirit of concern for the hardships of the peasant operated in

Yu's mind as well, but since there was no class of professional construction work-

ers to be hired for wall construction, there was no alternative but to extract that

labor from the peasants. In any case, needs of the state for better forts and walls

had still not been satisfied by the timc ofYu's death.

Warships

In his coverage of the history of military affairs in Korea, Yu stated that Korean
governments had lacked both fleets of warships and sufficient naval soldiers until
the late Koryo period. He quoted the memorial of U Hyonbo during King Kong-
min's reign (r. I 3S I -74) who proposed warship construction as a means of coun-
tering raids of Japanese pirates at the time.^75 As previously noted, he himself
proposed quotas of warships and funds for their construction and repair. He
remarked that present regulations only called for a single warship, armored ship,
troopship and two patrol boats for each coastal garrison and district town; sev-
eral places had no armored ships at all. Prefectural-level naval garrisons
(Ch'omsajin) had only two warships; provincial naval headquarters (Suyong)
had only three and one turtle boat; and regional naval headquarters (T'onggwan
or T'ongjesa) had but four warships, two special warships, and two turtle boats,
without enough crew to run the ships. He suggesting doubling the quotas at each
garrison and specified the number of naval soldiers and oarsmen to be stationed
at each base. He wanted to have ships built (replaced?) every six years and repairs
every three years. He calculated the cost of a warship at 450 kok (4,500 mal or
300 sam of rice according to current units of measurement, equivalent to about
the military grain tax to be paid by 38 support taxpayers every year). Since the
old ship could be sold for 90 kok, the net cost would only be 360 kok. He esti-
mated the cost ofrepairing a warship at 150 kok (100 sam) and made similar
calculations for smaller ships: 90 kok for armored vessels. 45 for troopships, IS
for reconnaissance vessels. Repair and construction was to be based on a set of
deadlines, and the funds were to come from regular revenues. not ad hoc levies.
The costs of masts, oars, and sails were to be paid for from a rice levy to pay
these specific costs (kami), one-third of which would be converted to cash, prob-
ably for paying wages to artisansJ6
What these plans reveal is a desire to create a strong naval fleet based on the
existing level of maritime technology. but no special interest in developing tech-
nology through research. His system of finance for the cost of ship construction
was also based on a grain surtax, a more flexible stratagem than his method of
support for soldiers and sailors. Given the traditional neglect of naval affairs,
this was still a significant step forward in strategic thinking.