MILITARY REORGANIZATION 533
If, however, education and organization were not sufficient to bring about the
appearance of the perfect magistrate, talented in both civil and military affairs,
then recourse could be had to rewards and punishment:
The magistrates will also realize that the people's affairs and the country's affairs
are their own concern, and they will not act in such desultory fashion, lying
around lazily eating and drinking as they do at present, just paying vague atten-
tion to their responsibilities. If we can really make each of the district towns
defensible and restore the military colonies [tun) so that they will be within eye-
shot of one another, the whole country will become strong. Even if we unfortu-
nately should incur another incursion such as the Imjin [(592) and Py6ngja
l [637) invasions. how would the country be so instantaneously thrown into
shock and confusion? And even though our military commanders might suffer
defeat in the fighting, the enemy would indeed not dare to take us lightly and run
around the country plundering it as if it were an unpopulated land.x2What Yu was really thinking of was a totally mobilized population. While the
regular soldiers were out on the front "chasing the enemy in running battles."
the districts might well be depleted of regular troops. In that case, the numer-
OLlS support personnel. almost triple the number of regular soldiers by Yu's own
plan, would be available for village and town defense. In fact, the dual combi-
nation of regular troops fighting pitched battles and home militia defending walled
towns was for Yu the warp and woof of military strategy, a fulfillment of the
Chou militia ideal adapted to contemporary Korean circumstance. What thai
meant was that even though the male population was divided between rotating
duty soldiers and support taxpayers. a program of training in the villages would
prepare the support personnel to take up arms in an emergency. "Regarding reg-
ular soldiers and support personnel, basically it is the people you train to be sol-
diers and soldiers who defend the people, and in wartime you use both."83
The idea of total war in which all civilians are subjected to the terrors of war
and rigors of combat is something that is. unfortunately, nol foreign to the twen-
tieth century. It was a lesson learned well from Korea's unfortunate experiences
during the Imjin War. Yu was sensitive enough to realize that the reorganization
of the national army, the use of reason in the placement of garrisons, and better
training methods for soldiers were still not sufficient to create a strong nation
from one so weak in the recent past. It required the revamping of education to
produce civil servants with military training and the ability to convert the whole
population into a fighting force in an instant. Only with this transformation of
the whole popUlation would his system of rotating duty soldiers and support tax-
payers work effectively in case of war.
Nevertheless, total transformation of contemporary ethics and mores is not
the easiest of tasks no matter what the society or the period. The shouts of warn-
ing from a country scholar in a remote village were not to be heard in the cap-
ital in his own time. and even a century later after he became well known. his