596 REFORM OF GOVERNMENT ORGANIZATION
sized the need for a single prime minister. The initial motivation behind the use
of two officials to function as counselors to the emperor was to allow some debate
and correction of possible errors in the advice of a prime minister, and yet that
device had not prevented the emergence of dictatorial officials like Li Lin-fu,
Yang Kuo-chung, and YUan Tsai.^28
Hu's idea of the prime minister was not one who concerned himself with detail
or bothered to sign all the casebooks of documents invol ved in routine business.
He viewed the task of the prime minister as if he were one of the three San-kung
of ancient Chou times, discussing the proper Way of government (i.e., matters
of principle and larger policy issues) with the ruler, encouraging the ruler to right-
eous behavior, expanding the search for outstanding men of talent for the bureau-
cracy, consulting the opinions of the people far and wide, and finding out problems
that were concealed from the ruler's view.^29
Usurpation of the Roles of'the Prime Minister and State Coullcil. Yu Hyongwon
was not only a forceful advocate of the views of Chung Chang-Cung, Fan Yeh,
and Hu An-kuo for establishing a supreme prime minister, he also insisted on
the restoration of the State Council to its legitimate place at the pinnacle of the
Choson dynasty bureaucracy. The State Council had been displaced by the Bor-
der Defense Command (Pibyonsa) that had been created by King Myongjong
in 1555 to oversee defense of the southern coast against the Wako pirates.
Although Yu had elsewhere recommended abolition of the Border Defense Com-
mand, he did not mention it directly in his chapter on the bureaucracy, but he
obviously believed that the Border Defense Command was analogous to the
Bureau of Military Affairs of the Sung dynasty, a national defense council that
had usurped the proper role of a civilian deliberative council.^30
He also presented material on the history of the Ming Bureau of Military Affairs
because it resembled the Border Defense Command in Korea. He traced its ori-
gin to palace officials called Nei-shu-mi-shih, created in the 760s in the Tang
period for the purpose of transmitting documents to the emperor and stalTed by
eunuchs. By the end of the ninth century, one of these officials usurped the author-
ity of the councilors of state (Tsai-hsiang). In the Five Dynasties period (907-60)
the eunuchs were removed from this agency, now called the Eunuch's Palace
Council (Shu-mi-yUan). In the Sung it was given charge of frontier defense and
placed on a par with the Secretariat (Chung-shu sheng) that handled civil affairs.
During the YUan-feng era of Sung under Emperor Shen-tsung (1078-86),
some wanted to abolish the bureau and return all authority over military affairs
to the Board of War, but Shen-tsung resisted the recommendation because he
preferred a kind of check-and-balance among competing agencies. Thus the
agency was carried over through the YUan dynasty until its abolition in Ming
times.' r Obviously. the history of this institution was enough to convince Yu
that Korea was living with the same unfortunate transference of authority that
had evolved from an original military crisis, and power had to be restored to
legitimate civil agencies.
Next he drew up a table for the reorganization of the existing Six Ministries