662 REFORM OF GOVERNMENT ORGANIZATIONact against the overweening authority of the ministerial chiefs. They were trans-
formed from administrative assistants to more important duty officials when they
were granted the privilege of recommending candidates for office along with
the high officials of the Ministry of Personnel, and their choices were often cho-
sen by the king. Eventually the Nanggwan were allowed to make recommen-
dations independently of the minister and high officials, who in turn were left
only with the right to make minor and low-level appointments, as Yulgok had
observed in the late sixteenth century.
Yu, however, took note ofYulgok's disapproval of this practice of vesting main
responsibility in the hands of subordinate Nanggwan because it overturned the
chain of command associated with rank and destroyed the respect of officials
for their superiors. Yulgok complained that the higher officials in the Ministry
of Personnel neglected their responsibility to conduct a thorough investigation
of merit, check diligence and laxity, and recommend promotion or demotion.
The function of review had become desultory and the original intentions of the
dynastic founders had been abandoned.^49 Yulgok's view of the problems involved
in review were obviously more convincing than Yi Sugwang's claim that they
stemmed from the military eoup of the twelfth century.
Terms of Office
Long Terms of Office. Since Yu convinced by his study of China that long peri-
ods of service for officials would put an end to the disruption caused by rapid
and frequent tranfers, he was quite sympathetic to Yulgok's protest to King Sonjo
in the late sixteenth century that officials did not have a chance to warm their
seats of office before they were transferred to another post. Even men like the
Dukes of Chou and Shao (in early Chou times) would not have had sufficient
time in office to achieve anything of merit if they lived in contemporary Korea.^50
Yu was willing to tolerate the current practice in Korea of transferring com-
petent officials to other posts when needed elsewhere, but only after they com-
pleted their current termsY Although he hoped to slow down transfers by having
the restored State Council and the Office of Inspector-General retain the right
to inspect transfers and impeach incompetent officials, this process had unfor-
tunately never proved successful achieving this goal in the past.
Illness as an Excuse for Transfer. Yu thought that one of the factors that con-
tributed to frequent transfers was the leniency shown to officials who asked for
them, particularly as a means of finding a different, temporary post while wait-
ing for a better position to fall vacant, a practice not available to officials in ancient
China. He found it still more distressing that officials who had been impeached
for their behavior immediately requested a transfer to a different position on the
grounds of illness.
In the late sixteenth century Yulgok had insisted that the king prohibit this prac-
tice. He wanted at least a minimum of ten days of incapacitation to qualify for
release from duty and a letter of support from the chief of the petitioner's agency.