KING AND COURT 609
served privileged royal status to the fifth generation of descent, but he did think
that he could introduce a stricter system of ranks with a reduction of expendi-
tures depending on the rank of the noble relative.
Another device he used was to divide princes into eldest and other sons, and
sons ofthe main wife versus the nothoi, or sons of concubines. His purpose was
apparently to reduce the emoluments paid to members of lesser categories, but
to make these distinctions, he had to accept the traditional Choson bias against
nothoi. Since he did, however, urge that the bias against the inherited slave sta-
tus of some royal concubines be abandoned, he was holding fast to his ultimate
objective of reducing inherited slavery as a major feature of Korean life. In total,
however, he could not question the utility of the monarchy or the necessity to
maintain privileges for four generations of royal blood; the best he could hope
for was a reduction of the costs involved.
In some ways he handled the problems of merit subjects in a similar fashion.
Even though they represented the practice of showering favors and rewards on
people who performed meritorious service for king and country, they were viewed
traditionally by Confucian purists as royal favorites at best, political hacks at
worst, whose support drained resources from the the national treasury at the
expense of the taxpayer. Once again, he dared only call for the abolition of the
minor merit subject lists, preserved the major merit subjects, but sought to limit
rather than abolish them by establishing a system of ranks and reduced emolu-
ments, shortening their tenure, and hurrying the exit of their descendants into
commoner status.
State funerals and banquets were two more categories that involved large expen-
ditures of state funds, but Yu refused to dispense with either of them because he
felt they were sacraments that were essential to the civilized state. He was even
willing to expand the number of officials and public servants, like frontier sol-
diers, who might qualify for publicly supported funerals, and he argued for a
few more banquets at state expense for officials as well. Instead, he hoped to
limit expenditures hy setting strict sumptuary regulations and eliminate non-
compensated labor service by converting it to hired labor paid for by the state.
But at no point did he challenge the legitimacy of rites and sacraments as a nec-
essary state expense.
Even when he made his most direct attack on an institution - his demand that
the Royal Treasury be abolished - he was not urging anything like the conver-
sion of the king into a figurehead monarch; only the assertion of bureaucratic
control over the royal exchequer to ensure observation of frugality in meeting
the king's needs. That this goal could not be achieved until the Kabo cabinet,
which was dominated by the Japanese military presence during the Sino-Japan-
ese War of J 894-95, might indicate that the prerogatives of the Korean king
were too powerful to be permanently restricted by the assertion of yangban or
bureaucratic influence. The yangban, however, were not that concerned about
curtailing the king's spending authority - they were happy to grant it to him in
exchange for protecting their property rights in land and slaves.