Introduction PART V. REFORM OF GOVERNMENT ORGANIZATION
NobilityPrinces. As a fiscal conservative, Yu Hyongwon was naturally concerned about
any inordinate expenditure of public funds, particularly on the king and any of
his relatives. He was, therefore, particularly anxious about the perquisites
granted to princes of the blood, and he sought to reduce the costs involved by
limiting the emoluments paid to them. Under current rules, descendants of kings
rctained their status and privileges as members of the royal family for four gen-
erations, but Yu sought to curtail the costs to the public treasury by revamping
noble titles (pongch 'aek) associated with royal princes by introducing qualifi-
cations based on knowledge of the classics and Confucian moral standards. Any
prince, down to the great-grandsons of deceased kings, would be eligible for
the grant of a noble title if at thc age of twenty years (Korean-style, where the
baby was one year of age at the date of bilth and two years of age at the next
Ncw Year's day) he could demonstrate mastery of one classic, the Small Learn-
ing (Sohak; Hsiao-hsueh in Chinese). and the Four Books of Chu Hsi's tradi-
tion. If he failed to pass the examination by the age of thirty, he might then be
awarded a royal title but at only one-half the ordinary salary. The prince of the
incumbent king might receive his title at the age of sixteen, but he, too, would
be subject to a half-salary cut after the age of twenty ifhe failed to demonstrate
familiarity with the texts. The object of this proposal had two objectives: reduc-
ing the cost of supporting princes of the blood and indoctrinating all the royal
princes in the Confucian canon.
Another device Yu proposed was to assign noble rank to the princes accord-
ing to the position of their mothers. This procedure would limit the highest rank
and emoluments only to a select few of the total body of princes. He did this by
drawing distinctions between the eldest son of the legitimate wife (the queen in
the case of the reigning king), other sons of the legitimate wives, and sons of
other royal or princely concubines, who in the royal harem would not be regarded
as concubines but as consorts of lesser rank than the queen. Thus, the eldest son
of a legitimate wife (including the queen) would be given rank lA, and his eldest
son 2A, while other sons would be given a title of rank I B, and secondary grand-
sons would receive rank 2B, and on down the line through the fourth genera-
tion of descent from a king. Only when the line of noble blood ran out in four
generations would all future royal descendants be allowed to enter service in
the king's regime.^2
Yu's distinction between the eldest son of the legitimate wife (or queen)
(chOkchangja) and all other sons of legitimate wives (soja) was similar to Song
Siyol's argument in 1659, that the deceased King Hyojong (r. 1649-59) deserved
to be mourned as a secondary son (soja) rather than the eldest legitimate son of
a previous king because as Grand Prince Pongnim, he had inherited the throne
only after Crown Prince Sohyon had been poisoned (or murdered). Yu shared
with Song the view that the traditional Korean use of the term soja to mean nothoi
by concubines was contrary to the Chinese definition that the term indicated