748 REFORM OF GOVERNMENT ORGANIZATION
of the strict Confucian moral code. Scholars who abhored being forced to par-
ticipate in the compact association meetings and refused to attend, were to be
reported to the magistrate and expelled from the community. Scholars who insulted
others and treated them with contempt were especially to be punished for inso-
lence. Nevertheless, their station permitted them certain perquisites like wear-
ing silk hats and garments and riding horses that were forbidden to commoners. 20
Never before had a compiler of a community compact included such a blis-
tering attack on the system of hereditary restriction of status and officeholding,
not even T'oegye or Yulgok. Although Yu felt forced to submerge his distaste
for slavery to contemporary social convention in these regulations, he felt less,
at least partially, inhibited in challenging the yangban.Nothoi
Yu also maintained the tradition introduced by Yulgok and continued by Hwang
Chonghae in 1641 to punish failure to maintain distinctions between legitimate
sons and nothoi (chOkso), a distinctly Korean variation not included in Chinese
compact texts, but he was more liberal than they by refusing to acknowledge
any justification for excluding nothoi from holding a post either as a govern-
ment bureaucrat or as a functionary of the subdistrict community compact asso-
ciation because the only criterion for officeholding had to be a man's worth, and
not family pedigree (munji). He, thus, reflected the mood of protest against the
discrimination shown the nothoi (.~ool) that had grown since the early fifteenth
century.2!
Yu, nonetheless, conceded that the registers of the community compact asso-
ciations still had to distinguish between them and legitimate sons. He explained
that while equal opportunity for office should be opened to sons of concubines,
within the family proper status distinctions (myongbun) had to be strictly
upheld. Not only did the young have to serve their elders, but those of base (ch on)
status were required to serve the noble (kwi). This meant that nothoi had to serve
the needs of the sons of the legitimate wife (chOk) and show them respect, but
at least in one small area no discrimination was to be shown between the sons
of concubines of commoner or slave status:
In all matters they [the nothoi] must not presume to be on equal status with
them. They should [sitl in a corner and not dare to sit next to them [legitimate
sons]. When seated, they will sit below the elder and younger legitimate broth-
ers, and when standing in a line, they will line up slightly behind [the legitimate
sons]. But [within the category of nothoi], all the sons of concubines will be
ranked in order of age, and no attention will be paid to whether the status of the
concubine [i.e., mother of the nothos] is good or base [yang or ch on, i.e., com-
moner or slave].Behavior in ordinary situations had to conform to this principle as well. A