PERSON NEL POLICY 671
requested expanding the system of reviewing officials beyond the Ministry of
Personnel by including more officials in evaluating candidates for high office
and requiring all officials to recommend others for office under penalty for non-
compliance.
Yu accepted the common criticisms of Chinese bureaucratic practice, includ-
ing short tcrms of office, frequent transfers of officials, and neglect of provin-
cial posts, because they were all a major part of the Korean scene, but he also
addressed some specifically Korean forms of malpractice in the sixteenth and
scventeenth centuries. He agreed with the objection to exccssive concentration
of the recommendation process in the Ministries of War and Personnel, but he
was also alanned by the unique transfer of responsibility from the ministers down
to the staff officials (Nanggwan). Not only did this disrupt the chain of com-
mand, but by increasing the important prerogatives of the Nanggwan in rec-
ommending officials, the focus of struggle between members of rival factions
in 1575 for subordinate staff posts in the Ministry of Personnel had actually
spawned the emergence of formal, hereditary factionalism. Contrary to the thrust
of Chinese criticism, which was to expand responsibility for recommending can-
didates to all officials rather than just the Ministries of Personnel and War, Yul-
gok and Yu himself believed that restoring the chain of command in the
personnel ministries would achieve more etTective evaluation of talent. By the
mid-seventeenth century, however, hereditary factions had become so institu-
tionalized that restoring Yulgok's sixteenth-century advice to make cabinet min-
isters responsible for their duties was hardly likely to eliminate factionalism,
the main obstacle to the fair and objeetivc evaluation of talent in Korea. In gen-
eral, Yu's omission of serious discussion of factionalism has to be counted as
one of the major deficiencies of his analysis.
Yu also objected to the excuse of illness because it increased the frequency
of transfer among all officials and interfered with maintaining the purity of the
censorate. The role of the censorate in government affairs had also become a
major scene of struggle in Korean politics during the reigns of Yon san 'gun and
Chungjong at the turn of the sixteenth century. Censors were originally and the-
oretically supposed to be neutral observers of political action to exert a moral
influencc over the bchavior of all, and they did becomc opponents of King
Yon san 'gun's tyrannical autocracy, and then of entrenchcd high officials and merit
subjects in King Chungjong's reign in the early sixteenth century. They pro-
fessed they were motivated by a desire to achieve moral purity, but in fact they
had become directly engaged in political action of their own, so that King
Chungjong decided to purge them and reduce their power in '5 [9. Censorate
power was reduced hut not eliminated because censors were still available to
perform tasks of surveillance and impeachment, but when hereditary factional-
ism emerged after [575, they could not be counted on to act as neutral watch-
dogs over competing factions and amhitious politicians. They had their own
careers to consider, and antagonizing a high official over a minor (let alone major)
transgression was sure to jeopardize their own careers.