666 REFORM OF GOVERNMENT ORGA NIZA TION
and is profoundly contrary to the correct principle by which worthy men should
be selected and appointed to office."57
Yu was merely reiterating an argument made by famous scholars and officials
in the previous century. When Cho Hon reported back from his trip to China in
1574, he remarked that in China family pedigree was never brought up in appoint-
ment decisions, sons of high officials held minor posts, and even provincial
degree-holders (chii-jen) and low-level degree-holders called tribute students
(kung-shih), were appointed to office and even attained high-ranking censorial
positions. Korean "families of the great and wealthy" (i.e., yangban), on the other
hand, engaged in arrogant and lewd behavior and could not be compared to the
abstemious and hard-working Chinese scholars and students who were com-
moners and nothoi (not aristocrats like Korean yangban)!
The selection of officials in Korea had been narrowed so greatly that most
rural peasants were discouraged from risking their family income by incurring
the cost of educating their sons. The nothoi of a prestigious father might get as
far as registration in a school but few could advance higher, while sons of base
or slave status had no hope at all for office, no matter how talented. Cho believed
that the Ming government at that time owed its success to its policy of refusing
favoritism for the sons of the elite, and he hoped to use his perception of Ming
egalitarianism to stir Korean society to reform. Unfortunately, his optimistic view
of M ing strength stands in stark contrast to recent studies of the decline of Ming
fortune.^58
Cho's perception of the past glories of Korean history were also flawed because
he thought that there had been opportunities for advancement for talented men
back in the period of the Korean Three Kingdoms, an age when restrictions based
on birth were quite severe under Silla's bone-rank status system and presum-
ably only slightly less so in Paekche and Koguryo. Only in the era of the Samhan
confederations prior to the fourth century in south Korea could one make a case
for more egalitarian opportunity and social institutions, but that was presum-
ably because social stratification was undeveloped in an age of small political
communities. Nevertheless, Cho believed that there had not been any discrim-
ination against the use of talented men for office, until the military officers in
the late twelfth century seized power by a coup d' etat because they feared that
"wise scholars might arise from their thatched houses and act as an obstruction
to their private interests, so they planned to abolish the examinations for nothoi,
and the route [for the advancement of] worthy men gradually became narrowed.
Up to the time of our dynasty [1392], the important officials who made policy
for the state only thought of benefiting their own sons and grandsons and did
not give any consideration to the loss of good men for office for [the future] ten
thousand generations."59 It was interesting that Cho identified the origin of dis-
crimination against nothoi with the military regime of mid-Koryo after 1170,
contrary to most twentieth century scholars who attribute the practice to the begin-
ning of the Choson dynasty.
In any case, Cho attacked discrimination against the nothoi of yangban and