630 REFORM OF GOVERNMENT ORGANIZATION
technical officials. Yu's reforms would have professionalized the service of
clerks by requiring examination for office instead of recruiting protected sons
of high officials and by permitting promotion of ordinary clerks to chief clerks
by examination. Furthermore, uncompensated labor service would be converted
to regular salaries, the status of professional clerks and runners would be
improved by teaching them moral principles and clearing their ranks of viola-
tors of the law. On the other hand, if chief clerks, clerks, or runners took a bribe
or commited fraud, they would be dismissed from office and enrolled for mili-
tary service.
The third-level category of runners (chorye) included runners, servants, gra-
nary attendants, and guards to be hired from the general population. The num-
ber of runners attached to individual government officials would be limited to
a maximum of seven for first rank officials and one for seventh rank. The rest
would go on duty at their office of assignment. Yu admired the contemporary
Chinese system because every government office (yamen) had a staff of run-
ners and each official was provided with individual runners or servants, all of
whom were recruited from the general population.57 In Korea, however, many
of the runners were government slaves employed in bureaus so that each office
had two separate rosters of men of "good" and "base" (slave) status. Yu com-
mented that because slaves comprised such a large percentage of the popula-
tion, even private slaves as well as government slaves had to be recruited as
runners and servants for government agencies and officials. He conceded that
in present circumstances it would be impossible to outlaw slaves from such duties,
but if the slave population declined partially by his own proposal for liberating
the offspring of commoner mothers in mixed marriages, the government would
have to recruit regular soldiers on tours of duty to assume positions as runners
and servants for civilian bureaus.
Yu reiterated his belief that any true king was obliged to abolish hereditary
slavery, but ifhe failed to do so, he would at least be obliged to raise the salaries
received by slaves to the level of commoners. Even by his own time the duties
of slaves and commoners functioning as government runners were the same. In
the future commoners and slaves could both be hired as runners, guards, or atten-
dants based only on the qualifications of each individual. Although the govern-
ment had never provided salaries, specific titles, or duties to commoner and slave
runners, it could easily choose to do so. Since private slaves who worked as clerks
along with commoners of good status (yang'in) had never experienced conflict
on the basis of rank, it was feasible for the government to apply a policy of equal
treatment for runners as welp8
The lowest category of servants and helpers, specific mainly to Korea, were
the boy servants (Sosa) distributed to individual officials. Yu described them as
young boys who volunteered for the work, and no calculation was conducted to
determine whether they were sons of clerks or private slaves. Their social sta-
tus varied in different provincial regions, particularly in the Hamgyong area of
the northeast, where the nothoi of officials and slave concubines monopolized