7IO REFORM OF GOVERNMENT ORGANIZATIONBecause some magistrates began to abuse their power, in 1417 the govern-
ment authorized the creation of a local expert (Sinmyongsaek) for each magis-
trate, supposedly to provide him with advice on local policy, but in reality to
prevent magisterial abuse, T'aejong, however, rescinded this order within the
year because the Sinmyongsaek was exercising too much restraint on magis-
trates, and in 1420 King Sejong strengthened the magistrates' authority even
more by prohibiting any local retired official or hyangni from impeaching a mag-
istrate or provincial governor for any act of malfeasance except endangering
state security or murder.
When the balance of power appeared to have shifted too greatly to the mag-
istrates, Sejong reinstituted the Yuhyangso in 1428, but he did so by converting
it into an agency of central rather than local power by requiring it to supervise
local clerks and constrain any criticism of the magistrates by the local elite
(p 'llmgwan). In the next few years, any unauthorized criticism of the magistrate
or governor was punished by reducing the rank of the district, and officials of
the central government in the capital were made heads of the Kyongjaeso in the
capital to control appointments of the leaders of the Yuhyangso in the villages.
In 1431 Sejong reversed the ban on private suits against magistrates by local
people, and King Sejo reconfirmed this policy after 1455. In addition, he dis-
patched secret censors (Ohaeng yusa) to investigate and impeach corrupt mag-
istrates, and in 1467 he abolished the Yuhyangso for the second time, not because
they limited the magistrate's power, but because one of them had tried to block
a petition against a magistrate's malfeasance by a private individual! Sejo also
believed that some of the Yuhyangso had cooperated with the rebellion of Yi
Siae that year. As soon as he died, however, his work was undone in 1469 when
the ban against private suits against magistrates was reinstituted.^9
In short, the Yuhyangso as the locus of local self-government was subverted
to represent the interests of the local elite against the magistrate or vice versa;
it was certainly no bona fide guarantor of official honesty or defender of peas-
ant welfare.
Local Non-Confucian Beliefs and Rituals
At the beginning of the dynasty communal groups also had their roots in native
spiritual and ritual beliefs. Incense associations (hyangdo) associated with Bud-
dhism were carried over from the previous SiIla and Koryo periods, but in the
late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries their connection with Buddhism was
lost because they were engaged primarily in worship of local deities and ani-
mistic spirits in mountains and trees, what the Neo-Confucians condemned as
"lewd sacrifices" Uimsa), They also hcld meetings to conduct funerals, but
because they did so in a festive and joyous spirit and oilered wine in prayer to
local spirits on behalf of the deceased, the Neo-Confucians were outraged. They
regarded such behavior as an immoral desecration of a properly mournful and
pious rite. The early fifteenth-century Neo-Confucians felt that a moral crusade