CHAPTER 15
The King and His Court
"So extreme had the majesty of the throne hecome that the officials
trembled with fear. That we still lie prostrate [hefore the king] is also a
custom bequeathed to us from the reign of the deposed king [YOnsan'gunJ."1REDUCING EXPENDITURES BY THE THRONELoyalty to the ruler was one of the articles of faith of the Confucian creed, and
yet most idealistic Confucians viewed the arbitrary exercise of power by the
monarch as a threat to good government. Yu Hyongwon accepted without ques-
tion the traditional legitimacy of the kings of Choson, which ruled out any dis-
cussion of the means of replacing incompetent monarchs, and he never once
mentioned that any of the kings of the dynasty should be deposed,
Short of questioning the king\ legitimacy, however, there were a number of
measures that Yu as a Confucian statecraft thinker sought to use to block the
potential for despotism and tyranny by the ruler. Yu's treatment of this issue
involved three main areas, The first was control of expenditures by the king on
himself, his relatives and favorites, and ultimately, the exchequer, particularly
the Royal Treasury, which operated independelltly from the Ministry of Taxa-
tion. It also included decisions about the prerogatives of the king to conduct his
supposedly private affairs, such as conducting marriages, funerals, banquets and
appointing lists of men to be afforded rewards for political loyalty - his merit
subjects. All these were budgetary matters, but they were all relevant to the ques-
tion of balancing royal prerogative against bureaucratic rights.
The second area of his concern was the use of the king in a symbolic way to
inculcate respect for certain Confucian values, and the third concern involved
the distribution of authority in running the bureaucracy and conducting daily
affairs of state. The last of these was related to the proper distribution of power
between the supposedly absolute monarch and his loyal and obedient officials
in conducting the daily affairs of government.