MILITARY SERVICE SYSTEM 563
he noted, a special messenger had to be sent to order them to report to the cap-
ital for fear that they might be won over to the rebel cause. "If we had estab-
lished capital soldiers, then how could we have had this problem?"
In this last instance, Yongjo was voicing the same proposal made by Yu
Hyongwon, that after restoration of the Five Guard System (in conjunction with
a reorganized Military Training Agency), the Five Guards in the capital would
recruit their troops from men living in the capital region, and not from the
provinces. On the other hand, Yu had nothing but admiration for rotating duty
soldiers, he just opposed assigning them to units too far from their home vil-
lages. In the end, Yongjo could not bring himself to order the abolition of any
of the existing capital divisions, concluding that while it might be a good idea
to get rid of some border garrison commanders (pyongjang), the (Five) Divi-
sions had been around too long.
At the end of the day Yongjo issued his formal decree cutting the tax rate to
one p'i!, eliminating dependent payments to provincial governors and to the
commanders of the Defense Command and Anti-Manchu Division, and reduc-
ing expenditures of the agency of national relief and the Office of Benefiting
the People (Hyeminso) by combining it with the Directorate of Medicine
(Chon'iiigam) in a single office. He issued another decree later in the day, cut-
ting his own food ration by 200 som and that of the crown prince by lOa, and
transferring the funds to the Office of Dispensing Benevolence as a demonstration
of his unselfish concern for the people. He ordered reduction of annual tribute
offerings of delicacies to the royal kitchen, and his officials responded by vol-
unteering to cut their own salaries. By now he was fully caught up in the game
of making a public display of Confucian frugality."
Not mentioned by the king at this time, but a crucial element in the mea-
sures adopted to supplement lost revenue was his adoption of a one-p' i !levy
on students who failed school examinations. Although designed as a revenue
measure to offset losses from the cut in the tax rate, this measure was subse-
quently to give rise to a vocal protest movement.
Hong Kyehui's Memorial on Equal Service, 1752In 1752. Minister of War Hong Kyehiii presented a long memorial to the crown
prince that introduced a document called "The True Facts of Equal Service"
(Kyunyok sasil ch 'aekcha), which began by tracing the history of the military
service system from the beginning of the dynasty. He stated his commitment to
two propositions that were also fundamental to the thinking ofYu Hyongwon-
the militia ideal and the Five Guards system of early Choson - and he traced
the process by which those two ideals had been adulterated since the fifteenth
century.In Yin and Chou times [in ancient China] they used land as the basis for furnish-
ing soldiers, and soldiers were dependent on agriculture [or soldiers were depen-