Yu's COMMUNITY COMPACT REGULATIONS 745and private slaves (kongch on and sach on) would be seated in a separate group
apart from people of good status (yangmin). Yu's willingness to accept the real-
ity of social life was also reflected in another regulation that permitted a yang-
ban to send a slavc or scrvant to take his place.
On the other hand, if any men who were regular officials of thc govcrnment
bureaucracy or functionaries of the community compact were in attendance at
the reading session of the compact regulations, they would be ranked only in
accordance with the degree of their position, and not at all according to their
good (commoner) or base (slave) status. Though a small concession to the human
dignity of slaves, the separation of slaves from "good" men was reminiscent of
Yulgok's regulations and reflected Yu's own realistic assessment that slavery was
not about to disappear from Korean society despite his ardent wish that it be
abolished.
Even though the spirit of the community compact was supposed to be inclu-
sive, there was one practical restriction on full participation. Since the formal
requiremcnts of the community compact meeting required that all villagers be
dressed in formal attire, if any of the villagers could not afford the required cloth-
ing, they might watch the session from outside the courtyard but could not par-
ticipate in the meeting until the formal ceremonies were over. r 1
Despite his provision to seat slaves away from the rest of the compact asso-
ciation in the formal recitation meeting, Yu was still convinced that the princi-
ple of ordering people by age instead of by pedigree or inherited status was
sanctioned by classical precedent and cssential to a reworking of the social norms
of contemporary Korean society. He derived inspiration for this point of view
from T'oegye's response to a question by Cho Chin in the sixteenth century as
to whcthcr scating arrangements according to age currently in practice in local
government (hyal1gdang) meetings did not cause "difficult problems." T'oegye
replied that seating order had to be determined on the basis of age in local gov-
ernment meetings. "The difference between nobility and baseness determines
the ordcr of rank; what does it have to do with order by age?" He cited the Wang-
chih section of the Book of Rites (Li-chi), which recorded that the various ranks
of prestige in Chou times, from the crown prince, secondary princes, court min-
isters, higher and lower officials, scholars and talented literati, were all admit-
ted to school and thereafter ranked according to their age, not according to the
degree of their "nobility or baseness I kwich '6n]."
T'oegye also referred to description in the Rites of Chou of the annual cere-
mony to local spirits celebrated by the hcad of one of the local government units
(Tang-cheng) whcrc food and drink were offered to peoplc in the community
who were ranked according to their age. Ranking by age meant that the oldest
people wcrc assigned scats or positions of respect or givcn thc bcst food, and
the purposc was to inculeate norms of filial piety and respect for elders. This
principle was the purpose behind the village archery contests, village wine-drink-
ing ritual (hsiang yin-chou chih Ii), and all local laws and rites deviscd by the
sages of Chou times as thc means of guaranteeing the very security of the state