754 REFORM OF GOVERNMENT ORGANIZATION
An Chongbok's Community Compacts
Two Compacts in Kvong'an County, 1756. The well-known late-eighteenth
century scholar-official. An Chongbok, became interested in community com-
pacts from reading the Sohak and later the Hsing-li ta-ch 'iian compendium of
Neo-Confucian lore. In his first publication written in 1740, the Hahak chinam
(Primer for LO\ver-Level Learning), he twice mentioned community compacts
as important for moral education and the rectification of social mores, and in
1756 he established a community compact for two villages in Kyong'an County
(Kyi5ng'an-myon iridongyak), located in K wangju-bu (in Cholla Province). The
individual items of his compact were influenced most heavily by the work of
Yulgok and Hwang Chonghae, and even though he wrote a chronological biog-
raphy of Yu Hyongwon and may have been influenced by his ideas on com-
pacts, he never cited him in his compact regulations.
An's compact regulations are most interesting for his vigorous defense of tra-
ditional social status distinctions rather than for any innovations in organization
and principles. He insisted that respect for social status (myl5ngbun) in general
and for yangban in particular had to be clear, but yang ban also had to be pun-
ished for their errors because they had the knowledge to know right from wrong
and were obliged to set standards of behavior for commoners (sang'in). They
were neither to exult in their own pedigrees nor continue their proclivity for fac-
tional dispute.
Although some had thought that factionalism had been caused by the inher-
ent nature of scholars and their propensity for argument, he could not believe
that such behavior was endemic because they should have been totally preoc-
cupied with study and self-rectification, and should not have thought that cor-
rect opinions were the exclusive property only of their own faction. Instead of
prescribing punishment for factional behavior, however, he merely urged them
to follow King YOngjo's declared policy of equal opportunity for all (t'angp 'yong)
and strive within the community compact to eliminate the factional tendency.
He deplored the recent habit among students of treating teachers as equals
and added a rule that students demonstrate respect for their teachers even though
they might be younger. He required commoners (tenants?) and slaves to pay cour-
tesy calls on yangban within three days of the New Year and to prostrate them-
selves at least once before them, habits that he claimed only the scholars of
Kyongsang Province were practicing at the time. He provided public rewards
for slaves (nobi) for displays of loyalty to their masters, but also required them
to suffer corporal punishment for moral errors or any sign of disrespect for their
masters. He declared that nothoi of yangban were, of course, human, but that
the distinction between them and legitimate sons had to be maintained strictly,
and any examples of disrespect by them had to be punished, as it was prescribed
in the national law code.'"
He divided his compact organization itself into two kye according to the sta-
tus of the members: the first called Upper Kye (sanRgye) with yangban members,