660 REFORM OF GOVERNMENT ORGANIZATION
becoming familiar with their jobs and promoted frequent transfers. As the super-
visory capacity of the highest officials declined, responsibility for the conduct
of business in capital bureaus was shifted down to lower officials of staff rank
(Nanggwan), then eventually to the irregular staff personnel and clerks in the
capital bureaus. This was not the enviable shift of responsibility from center to
locality that the astute Chinese commentators had mentioned; it was the trans-
fer of responsibility from competent regular officials to poorly trained, irregu-
lar officials and clerks.Review ProceduresLaxity in Review Procedures. Since Yu was convinced that regular review pro-
cedures of all bureaucrats would guarantee the purity of officials, he prescribed
that on the fifteenth day of the twelfth lunar month the records of all officials be
reviewed and final decisions recommended by the State Council, the heads of
the ministries (Personnel and War?), and the Office of Inspector-General for pro-
motion or dismissal. It would appear that by expanding participation in the review
process Yu was removing exclusive responsibility for final recommendations from
the Ministries of Personnel and War alone, let alone the subordinate officials
and clerks of those two ministries who might otherwise be guilty of favoritism.
This suggestion seems to reflect a tradition of Chinese criticism of those min-
istries for excessive routinization of procedure and domination by clerks.
Yu also suggested that the process could be streamlined by reducing the num-
ber of recommended candidates for each office presented to the king from three
to two in conformity with Chinese practice, and if too many vacancies happened
to occur, they could be filled by supplementary monthly reviews. The king should
interview prospective appointees rather than allow personnel matters to be han-
dled exclusively by the Ministry of Personnel.
Yu presented the views of a number of scholars and officials on the problems
of personncl administration. Yi Sugwang, the early seventeenth-century scholar,
confirmed that the standard and regular system of appointment was conducted
in Koryo times twice a year until government was taken over by the military
usurper Ch'oe Ch'unghon in T T 96. Ch'oe then transferred responsibility over
appointments from the king and his Ministry of Personnel to a separate agency
under his own Personnel Office (ChOng bang) which then proceeded to fill vacan-
cies as soon as they occurred. The rapid process of selection meant abandon-
ment of reviewing past records prior to appointment, still a far cry from the
monthly appointment system used by the Ministry of Personnel in China.
What Yi Sugwang's criticism signified was that, contrary to the Chinese expe-
rience, the problem of review was not the routinization of the Ministry of Per-
sonnel, hut the usurpation of the regular personnel ministry by the leaders of
the successful military coup against civil authority in , '70. Evidently, laxity in
reviewing the performance of incumbent officials may have persisted as a result
of that traumatic experience.