674 REFORM OF GOVERNMENT ORGANIZATIONstationed in a provincial capital with full control over provincial affairs was a
late phenomenon in Korean history, established only at the beginning of the
Choson dynasty. This meant that the supervisory function of the governor as a
watchdog over the district magistrates was relatively weak. Furthermore, the
unhappy experience of Hideyoshi 's invasions showed that provincial mil itary
authorities lacked sufficient autonomy and power to control troops in their dis-
tricts and provinces, Any desire to strengthen the governor's or provincial mil-
itary commanders' positions, however, ran up against the traditional statecraft
view inherited from the fear of tyrannical regional military commissioners of
the T'ang dynasty in China, that too much gubernatorial power would lead to
regional rebellion and destruction of the dynasty itself.
A third problem of local administration was, of course, the perennial prob-
lem of corruption, but that problem was exacerbated institutionally in Korea by
the policy of the early Choson dynasty to eliminatc all salaries for clerks. Since
fees and gratuities were sanctioned by law, the clerks were virtually given carte
blanchc to fleece the peasantry and the public.
Finally, the ultimate issue in establishing programs to solve administrative
problems in a bureaucratic regime was deciding the level of confidence and trust
one could repose in the bureaucracy itself. This was especially difficult for a
reformer like Yu Hyongwon, who believed that the epitome of good government
had been achieved in a feudal age in which local autonomy was regarded as a
positive advantage, not a sign of the incompleteness and inefficiency of a proper
bureaucratic system. For that matter, since this perception was not confined to
reformers like Yu, but shared by almost every Confucian of the bureaucratic agc
(at least intellectually), the bias against excessive centralization of bureaucratic
authority and for relative local autonomy was built into the Chinese system of
local bureaucracy.
This tug-of-war between central and local interest meant that district magis-
trates usually controlled relatively large territories and could operate at the vil-
lage level only by dispatching runners and clerks to natural villages whcre they
had to deal with village chiefs and elders and compromise with local interests.
Many of these Korean village leaders were members of larger yangban lineages
or members of the central bureaucracy.
When the central government, therefore. hoped to implement the adminis-
tration of some program, whether taxation or relief, it had to decide generally
between two methods: direct control by the representatives of central, bureau-
cratic power - the district magistrates and their clerks at the local level-or indi-
rect control, in which power and authority for administration was vested in local
leaders. In this chapter, the administration of price stabilization, relief, and loan
operations will bc considered in this context, and in later chapters the question
of vesting authority in local associations like the Hyangch'ong dominated usu-
ally by local yangban, or creating local community compacts (hyangyak) as agen-
cies of mutual surveillance, control, moral instruction, and ideological
indoctrination will be explored.