638 REFORM OF GOVERNMENT ORGANIZATIONparticularly the brimmed hats of the Confucian scholars, the fur hats of the mil-
itary officials, and the othcr hats worn by clerks and commoners. He noted that
the horsehair hal was also worn in China, but by no means exclusively. In Korea,
however, everyone wore the horsehair hat, "whether noble or base," a habit that
he believed imposed 100 great a cost on the people as a whole. Furthermore, he
preferred to have men of different statuses wearing different hats, possibly
because the Korean custom was too uniform for his predilection for status dis-
crimination.
Cho commented that he had already heard that the families of some Korean
officials and scholars wanted to have their own children copy Chinese hair styles
but were afraid to allow them for fear that the king would disapprove. Cho wanted
King Sanjo to adopt all these Ming styles and he hoped that allowing the fam-
ilies of scholars and officials to do so would set a model for the common peo-
ple to follow. He hoped that some time in the future the Chinese might say of
Korea that it was a country of caps and belts, that is, a civilized country whose
people wore the civilized clothing styles of a cultured nation.I)()
Cho not only expressed admiration for the superiority of Chinese clothing,
he attacked possibly the most identifiable item of clothing associated with the
Korean male - the horsehair hat. Lest his distaste for nativc custom and his admi-
ralion for Chinese superiority be missed, he left no room for doubt when he wrote
that he was envious of the Chinese capacity to convert people not only of diverse
cultures, but even of barbarian lifestyles, into the unity ofthe greater Ming Empire
as a whole. The provinces of Yiin-nan and Kuei-chou in the south and south-
west of China, which were IO,OOO Ii C3,OOO miles) from the capital, were until
recent years dominated by non-Chinese or barbarian culture and modes of dress,
but now they were all wearing Chinese-style clothing.
"How much more should this be the case [i.e., should it be possible for us]
since our land of Kija is only separated from the [Mingi capital by not as much
as 4,000 Ii and we are no different from the feudal lords of the five territories
of the Chou [in our relationship to the Ming Emperor]. Yet with regard to our
clothing and hats, wc have much to be ashamed of!"
He concluded by submitting his drawings of all the types of Chinese cloth-
ing he had described to be copied and distributed to the provinces as the means
for transforming all Korean garb to the Chinese styleJo
Cho Han's admiration for the superiority of Chinese and Ming culture, and
his sense of inferiority about Korean customs might have been a degree more
extreme than most educated Koreans at the time, but it should not have appeared
outlandish or reprehensible to them. On the contrary, in the twentieth century
Cho's statement was a total embarrassment, so much so to the intensely nation-
alistic North Korean translators ofYu's Pan 'gye surok that they omitted the above-
quoted sentence from the text of their edition of the work.
That Yu Hyongwan quoted Cho Han's memorial at length, and in fact used it
as the model for his own recommendation for the adoption of the Ming version
of Chinese clothing is powerful proof of his own admiration for Chinese ways