608 REFORM OF GOVERNMENT ORGANIZATION
The mler must empty his mind and look forward to the minister's expression of
view, and the minister below should gaze up into the Heavenly countenance to
see whether He accepts [his point of view] or not. Only then can there tmly be
a confluence of wills, a supplementing of what is lacking, a rectification of error,
and achievement of a flourishing age of great peace. Since ancient times there
was never a case when good government was achieved when the mler flaunted
his power in arrogant fashon and his subjects trembled in fear at his majestic
authority47Yu, in other words, followed closely Cho Kwangjo's and Cho Hon's classic
defense of open expression of views in an atmosphere of congeniality during royal
lecture sessions as a fundamental defense against the evils of tyrannical and
despotic governance by an absolute monarch. But the only way that mood could
be achieved was by the king's own choice - not by an appeal to any law higher
than the command of the king, or to any fundamental right of free expression.
711e Personal Bond between Official and KingYu's attitude toward the king, however, was by no means entirely negative or
cautious. The king was still the supreme ruler of the state and the supreme author-
ity over all members of the bureaucracy, but even though Yu accepted the legit-
imacy of bureaucratic organization, he still believed that the personal bond of
loyalty created in feudal times between Chinese lords and vassals was prefer-
able to the impersonal rules and regulations of the bureaucratic system.
To introduce some flavor of the personal bond of feudal times, Yu suggested
that the Chou feudal practice of summoning officials to audiences with the ruler
at court was indispensable to give both ruler and official alike a feeling of human
contact. "If it had not been like this, they would not have had any way to make
clear what the proper rules of social behavior [Ii, ye in Korean] between ruler
and minister were, or to penetrate the feelings of those above and below." At
the least, an official would be required to attend an audience at least once in a
six-year term of office to make contact with his ruler. Infrequent as it might be,
personal petitions to the ruler would be still be preferable to indirect control
through superior officials.^48
Conclusion
Yu's discussion of the ways by which these goals should be carried out were not
that simple and straightforward. however, for instead of simply issuing a set of
homilies exhorting the kings to change their ways, he attempted to make accom-
modations with certain accepted practices. The first instance was his attempt to
limit the rising costs that had resulted from the proliferation of royal relatives
over the generations. He obviously felt he could not simply call for the conver-
sion of royal relatives to commoner status because of the existing rules that pre-