684 REFORM OF GOVERNMENT ORGANIZATION
by entertaining guests and visitors, or engaging in military affairs, Otherwise,
ordinary titles, methods of recruitment, and standards of treatment for these staffs
would be kept consistent with the staff personnel in the capital. Given the exist-
ing situation, official slaves living near the towns that functioned as the sites for
district magistrates would be recruited as runners (chorye),25
For the staff of a prefectural magistrate (at the Kun) Yu prescribed a quota of
fourteen clerks, fifty-eight runners, and eight boy servants with specific jobs for
each one. The fourteen clerks were to bc divided among six clcrks (of the Yuk-
pang) with separate responsibilities for each. In the present system the housc-
hold chief (Hojang) was a position caITied over from the early Choson period
but was waning in authority, and the emerging de facto main clerk of the mid-
dynastic period, the personnel clerk (Ibang) was taking over his responsibilities,
but they performed the same duties concurrently instead of taking turns. The other
clerks would be in charge of the Taedong Granary (Taedongch'ang) of grain taxes
to purchase tributc items, the Ever-Normal Granary (Sangp'yongch'ang) for price-
stabilization and relief, the Military Weapons Storehouse (Kun'gigo), assistants
for the magistrate and his assistant (Siingbal), and other yamen secretaries and
scribes for the yamen clerks. The runners were assigned to each of the granaries,
special runners for the jailhouse, specialists to care for tea and liquor, house ser-
vants as personal servants for the magistrate and his assistant the assembly of
clerks, and other odd officials. The tasks of the boy servants were less specific.
The quota of staff personnel for the governor's yamen (Yang) consisted of fif-
teen (one more than the fourteen for prefectural magistrates), seventy runners,
and fourteen boy servants. The governor had the same staff of clerks in addi-
tion to a scribe to write official reports to the throne, and a staff of seventeen
runners for his own personal needs and six more for his assistant. The rest of
the runners were in charge of guarding granaries, serving guests, caring for the
horses in the stable, cooking for the whole office, and waiting on the staff of
staff officials. The structure of the governor's office varied only by more per-
sonal servants than the staff of the prefectural magistrate.
Yu took time to articulate his philosophy of providing liberal staff for the needs
of local officials to alleviate the lahor service requirement on ordinary citizens
for the performance of service personnel in local government offices. He gave
consideration to one proposal to save costs simply by cutting the number of run-
ners (Saryong, in colloquial language), recruiting residents from communities
near the governors' or magistrates' headquarters to perform service, compen-
sating them with a grant of one kyang of land and a salary of six mal of rice per
month, and dividing them into six shifts of two months of duty per year. He
rejected this idea, however, because he believed that nonspecific general func-
tions required of the Jabor service system had to be replaced by specialized clerks
and runners with specific tasks.
Under the present system, scholars, farmers, artisans, merchants, and even sol-
diers did not have enough spare time to meet their service responsibilities. Another
problem was the conflict between the need for soldiers and personnel for run-