CENTRAL BUREAUCRACY 629like the armored soldiers (Kapsa), but they could not advance to rank 6A as a
regular official. King Sejo had already prohibited promoting clerks to civil posts
in the capital, and it became even more difficult for clerks to obtain military
sinecures, let alone magistrate's posts. They were only left with completely hon-
orary "shadow posts" (yongjik).
In the fifteenth century sons of yangban with the special protection privilege
(iim) from their yangban fathers were allowed to become chief clerks, a prac-
tice that So Kojong once praised in 1473 hecause the Chou dynasty staff clerks
(Fu, Shih, Hsii, Tu) "were also in the stream of scholars," even though sons of
common peasants (or men of "good" status) were relegated to less privileged
clerk positions. But by 1466, the right to salaries for sinecured military posts
was eliminated, and the opportunities for subsequent assignments was restricted
to the posts of district magistrate, post-station, and ferry clerks. The growing
number of examination passers (of the munkwa examination) began to replace
ex-clerks in magistrate's posts, and the recruitment of chief clerks by examina-
tion was replaced by the increasing appointment of the "protected" (um) sons
and relatives of high officials (even though they had to pass an examination prior
to appointment).5)
Since salaries had heen provided to all officials in Koryo times except at the
end of the dynasty, including irregular posts like clerks or government artisans,
Yu's plan was more a restoration of Koryo practice than simply a progressive
step forward to compensated labor. In early Choson times, however, uncom-
pensated irregular officials like clerks were not automatically provided with
salaries but had to be given the equivalent of a sinecured "salary post" (nokkwan,
later called ch 'eajik) just to provide them with income, and they rotated on and
off "salary" for brief periods to cut government operating costs. The numher of
chief clerks with compensated ''salary posts" was reduced to about J 9 percent
in 1414 and IO percent in 1462, and even this was abolished altogether in 1466,
leaving them without any official salaries at allY)
Yu wrote that by his time the opportunity for chief clerh to retire to the post
of post-station official (let alone district magistrate) had been completely elim-
inated because only those with influential connections with the aristocracy
(munhOl) (sons of high officials with the protection privilege) had the slightest
chance for this kind of position. He pointed out that in Chou China common-
ers were given the chance to serve as one of the four clerk or service positions,
but none was allowed to advance to the rank of regular officials. In the period
of the unification of China under the Ch'in dynasty, the anti-Confucian rulers
"cast off the Confucians and exalted the clerks," and subsequently the Han
dynasty began the practice of allowing clerks to become regular officials. This
practice was still in effect in Korea to the middle of the fifteenth century, but it
had been brought to a complete end hy the mid-seventeenth century.
The status of clerks in Korea, even including the chief clerks, had declined
so much by the mid-eighteenth century that they became part of the chung'in
or middle men, and the lowest rank of that pejorative category even below the