KING AND COURT 589
favor. In the Han dynasty, however, Emperor Kao (Kao-tsu) held a banquet where
officials and a few feudal lords offered him their congratulations. and in the Sung
at the banquets in spring and autumn in honor of the emperor's birthday and the
sacrifices to Heaven and Earth, officials toasted the emperor's long life and the
emperor granted them flowers in return.
Yu, however, thought that these practices were "like playing games, completely
contrary to the utmost respect with which rites were treated by the men of ancient
times." For Koreans to continue banquets held by official agencies in honor of
the king would also be tantamount to presumptuous acts ill-fitting the place of
subjects, a mistake in the conduct of rites, and an excuse for profligate spend-
ing. The only purpose of banquets in ancient China was for "the ruler to get his
officials to give all their efforts and exhaust all their abilities in performing their
tasks for the country, and only for that reason did he rthe ruler] provide them
with food and drink in order to encourage them.""
Aholish the Ro:vall}'easury: Bureaucratic Control
Financial policy under the king's regime had led only to rapid expansion of funds
controlled by agencies under the king's command. The most powerful agency
of royal finance was the Royal Treasury (Naesusa), but Yu reasoned that since
the king had lawful title to all property available in the kingdom, there was no
need for a royal treasury at all. Because the only justification for its existence
was to store small amounts temporarily, Yu invoked the ancient rule that the ruler
of a small state was entitled only to ten times the income for a prime minister,
and a separate Royal Treasury was totally unnecessary for this purpose. Once
it were abolished, its slaves could be reallocated to capital bureaus and provin-
cial yamen, or assigned as tribute payers to other agencies. Lands owned by the
Royal Treasury could be used to provide allotments to peasants, and its slaves
could be used for assignment to princes or princesses. (One can't help but notice
that Yu called for reassigning official slaves to other agencies rather than man-
umitting them, as one might expect!)
Yu cited Nanl Hyoon, who in King Songjong's reign (fifteenth century) praised
the deposed King Tanjong for having reduced his royal expenditures, an exam-
ple of frugality abandoned by the expansion of Royal Treasury income under
S6ngjong. The expenditures of the Royal Treasury rose because of the frequent
trips of its staff to local districts, the maintenance of private warehouses in the
capital, and the rotting of excess grain storage in ocean-going transport termi-
nals.In the worst cases, the "agrarian huts ofthe main palace" (pon 'gung non gsa)
were taken over by the king as his private property and used for funding Bud-
dhist and lewd rites.
Yulgok urged King Sonja in the sixteenth century to lUfIl over all funds in the
King's Treasury (Naet'ang) because it was wrong for him to maintain his own
private treasury. The king had access to the nation's production, granaries, and
state treasuries anyway, and he was obliged to limit his expenditures. Yu sought