654 REFORM OF GOVERNMENT ORGANIZATION
direct appointment of their own officials. In 779 Shen Chi-ch'i castigated the
procedure of his own department for substituting numerical results of tests on
"comprehension and writing" skills for an investigation of "virtue, talent, and
hard work" as the basis for recommendations for office because they were over-
whelmed with the numbers of applicants for positions.
Shen traced the origin of routinization in personnel administration to the Ch'i
and Sui dynasties, which stripped the prefectural and district magistrates of the
right to appoint their own subordinates. Although he preferred to return to this
practice, he proposed a compromise proposal to allow the Ministries of Per-
sonnel and War to participate in discussing the promotion of officials of the
fifth through first ranks and bureau chiefs and their assistants to the position
of state councilor (Tsai-ch'en). District magistrates would also be given the right
to appoint their executive assistants of the sixth rank and below with final
approval by the the two ministries. Shen assumed that a strict method of review
would lead to a virtual purge of as many as 80 to 90 percent of all officials on
the grounds of corruption or incompetence. 26 Yu took this proposal so seriously
that he copied the text of Shen's recommendation for amendment of person-
nel procedures from the Tung-lien.^27
Excessive Urbanization. Yu also cited other opinions about personnel prob-
lems presented in the T'ung-lien that attributed the decline in the classical prac-
tice of recruiting local people for magisterial posts to the growth in the size and
lUXury of the capital in the Han period and the abandonment of this practice in
Sui times. The prosperity of the capital and large cities and the number of their
shops and markets attracted villagers from the countryside because of their desire
to achieve a better life. In the Sui dynasty, the institution of the new civil ser-
vice examination system in the capital to recruit officials attracted swarms of
candidates for examinations who clogged the roads and hostels. Men abjured
hard work in the villagcs and sought to achieve their fortunes in the capital, sell-
ing off their family property to finance the trip. The result of this change had
risked the prosperity of a thousand villages to produce one exalted city. The only
solution to the problem was to lock the gates of the capital against itinerant schol-
ars seeking the fortunes of the city and reduce the number of officials.^28
Although the capital city in Korea was the major urban center of the country,
it was not nearly as populated and complex as the major cities of China. Yet the
attraction of the capital to scholars still remained strong in the Choson dynasty.
Reform ProposalsRecommendation. Since Yu Hyongwon had adopted recommendation as one
of his major procedures in his plan to reconstitute an official school system to
replacc the civil service examinations, he was naturally interested in Chinese
proposals to use recommendation as a means of evaluating officials. He cited
the views of Lu Yii of the third century Wei dynasty, who aspired to restore the
classical spirit of yielding to the talents of others to permit selection of the most