Yu's COMMUNITY COMPACT REGULATIONS 753mutual aid and surveillance, and community compacts in progression, Ch'oe was
apparently not directly influenced by those precedents. He also read and praised
Yu Hongwon's Pan 'gyc surok, but he did so a decade after he established his
own compact and granary. He apparently borrowed some of the wording ofMing
T'ai-tsu's Six Edicts but was not dependent exclusively on any single model,
including Chu Hsi's.27
His more explicit delineation of punishments went beyond Yulgok by providing
for corporal punishment for scholars (saryu) who refused to change their ways,
far more severe than Chu Hsi's lenient penalty of "allowing the person to leave
the compact." He was more willing than previous scholars and officials to turn
violators over to the magistrate than deal with them in the compact organiza-
tion, and preferred talking about crimes (choe) rather than the usual transgres-
sions (kwasil) in most community compact regulations. On the other hand, Ch'oe
wanted to reward members who performed good deeds and dispensed with the
traditional regulation for keeping a separate register of misdemeanors. He also
provided that the rules of the compact be read to the members in Han 'gul for
the edification of all classes. Tabana has commented on Ch'oe's vindictive stress
on punishment rather than persuasion as the means for e~tablishing social order,
and although this tendency was not true for all writers on the subject, there may
well have been a trend since Yulgok (and T'oegye) to convert the compact from
an agency of moral teaching to one of coercive enforcement.^28
Kim Hongdilk's Community Compact in Pm/n, 1747Kim Hongdiik was magistrate ofPoiin in Ch'ungch'ong Province when in 1747
he adoptcd his own version of a community compact to raise the morals of his
district. Kim borrowed heavily from Yulgok's delineation of punishments in his
Haeju Community Compact and his Village Granary Kve Pledges, but as
opposed to Yulgok and Ch'oe Hiingwon, he reduced the penalties for the schol-
ars (saryu, i.e., yangban) prescribed in Yulgok's regulations because he thought
that punishing scholars was unacceptable. Even a scholar who refused to
promise that he would reform his errors would only have his name recorded and
not be asked to endure a reprimand by the compact's officials.
Kim had some compassion for lower persons (hain) or slaves as well, but hardly
enough to make a significant difference because he still retained the maximum
penalty of forty strokes of the stick for them, but he assured his readers that
forty strokes would not be enough to kill anyone, and the head of the Kye in any
case could be counted on to stop the beating if he thought it might kill the accused.
Even though Yu Hyongwon may have been part of a trend to treat scholars and
yangban with less respect, that attitude was not shared hy every scholar-official
in the kingdom.29