626 REFORM OF GOVERNMENT ORGANIZATIONREGULATING OFFICIALS AND CLERKSReducing the Number of Officials and ClerksYu's purpose in reorganizing the capital bureaucracy was to economize on the
number of officials and assistants and permit the state to finance the total cost
of the government, contrary to the reliance on fees and bribes by unsalaried work-
ers of the government. He sought to restrict the total number of capital officials
to 540 men, accompanied by 4,480 assistants defined as 45 chief clerks (Noksa),
480 clerks (Sari), 2,955 runners (chorye) consisting of commoners and slaves,
and 1,000 petty clerks, not including a maximum of two-to-three hundred assis-
tants to staff members of the royal family, in-laws, merit subjects, and enfoeffed
lords. Ch'on K wan'u has estimated that Yu's proposals would have reduced one-
third the number of total officials from the capital establishment. 60 percent of
regular officials. and 565 high-level officials from the Six Ministries and other
agencies.
Even though a number of independent agencies would havc been reduced,
and most of those remaining would have been assigned to one of the Six Min-
istries for control and supervision, the total number varied from four assigned
to the Ministry of Taxation to sixteen under the Ministry of Rites, or a total of
thirty-nine. In addition there were thirteen independent agencies still left to han-
dle specialized tasks like remonstrance, royal relatives, the National Academy
and other responsibilities. Yu's reforms would have amended and reduced the
size of the bureaucracy and reformed the agency of control by strengthening the
prime minister and Six Ministries, but it would not have radically changed its
overall slructure. .J9
Salaries for Support Staff ill Capital Bureaus
The usurpation of power and authority from regular officials by clerks had been
a prevalent theme among critics and reformers since the beginning of the dynasty.
To illustrate this point, Yu cited Ho Chok's remarks to King Lnjo early in the
seventeenth century that said that because regular officials had no idea of what
they were supposed to do on the job, clerks and petty officials had taken over
the responsibilities of regular officials. Ho referred to the statement of Cho Sik,
chief state councilor under King K wanghaegun (r. 1608-23), that "Things just
disappear into the hands of the clerks."5^0 What made this situation particularly
deleterious was that the clerks were virtually driven to corruption as their only
means of support because the central government had eliminated their salaries.
Yu felt that the whole system of support staff for capital bureaus needed to
be reorganized and the clerks provided with salaries by the government to ensure
their honesty and probity. Yu wanted to approximate the ideal four types of ser-
vice personnel in the Chou dynasty described in ancient texts: the storehouse
manager (Fu), document clerk (Shih), procedural clerk (HsU), and runner (Tu).