590 REFORM OF GOVERNMENT ORGANIZATIONto prove his contention that the king had no right to maintain his own separate
treasury by arguing that had the Royal Treasury been the only locus of funds
left for state purposes in a time of crisis, the king would have had no choice but
to turn them over to the responsible agencies of state, anyway.12
Yu also sought to curtail other methods for providing food and provision for
kings in similar fashion. The Royal Cuisine Office (Saongwon) had already been
given funds for the purchase of pheasants so that the earlier system of main-
taining 8,000 falconers (unggun) and supporting them by collecting cloth pay-
ments from peasants could be abolished and the peasants returned to regular
military service. 13 Abolishing falconers would establish a precedent for elimi-
nating a number of offices for obtaining material goods directly by replacing it
with purchases of goods on the market (see the discussion of the reform of the
tribute system, later). Yu recommended abolishing one special office for sup-
plying the costs of guest expenses (the Sajaegam) simply by purchasing fire-
wood and coal from the tribute middlemen (kongmul chuin). He felt that even
when palace agencies had sufficient reserves to provide these goods without buy-
ing them, during periods of shortage the large population of the capital would
be willing to offer these products for sale to the palace. 14
Yu's was a voice in the wilderness when it came to curtailing the king's pre-
rogative to dispose of funds for his own purposes, and the problem was not solved
until the Kabo reform of 1894. His attitude was born of the frugality typical of
most Confucians, but he also wanted to constrain royal authority and bring it
under the restriction of a more rational process of governance, which signified
bureaucratic oversight over royal profligacy.
THE KING AS SYMBOL
The King's Personal Plot: Encouragement of AgricultureOne of the most important rituals in Yu's catalogue was the ancient tradition of
the ruler's ceremonious cultivation of his own plot (chokchon; chi-t'ien in Chi-
nese) primarily because it was an important symbol of the Physiocratic tradi-
tion in Chinese and Confucian thought. He began by tracing the origin of respect
for agriculture by rulers to the Duke of Chou and King Wen of Chou. He then
described the ceremonies first conducted at the beginning of the reign of King
Hsi.ian (827-782 B.c.) at the time ofthe first planting of crops in the spring when
the positive force of yang was flowing through the earth to assist the earth in
conveying the vital forces that would cause crops to grow. Ceremonies of purifi-
cation were held and officials fasted prior to King Hsi.ian's personal cultivation
of his personal plot of land (chokchOn), and a toast of wine and offerings of food
to the god of the earth were made that same day. The king then made tours of
the kingdom at weeding and harvesting time to ensure that the peasants were
diligent in their labors, and he devoted his attention exclusively to agriculture
during three of the four seasons, and only in the winter would he concentrate