Yu's COMMUNITY COMPACT REGULATIONS 757tribution ofthe Comhined Edition of the Community Compact and Local (Wine-
Drinking) Rite (Hrangnye happ 'yon) and the recitation of compact regulations
when the wine-drinking rite was conducted. Since he believed that community
compacts had to be voluntary organizations, however, he opposcd forcing them
on the population and agreed that they were not necessary in the capital, as
Song Siyol had once advised. Thus, they were only in ccrtain areas and were
viewed more as a means for moral education than as the format for local self-
government. 35Tasan's Community Compact of 182 IWhen Chongjo died, he was succeeded by his ten-year old son, King Sunjo.
The grand dowager of King Yongjo, who was sympathetic to the pyokp a fac-
tion and hostile to the Christians, became regent. The court was consumed with
ferocious attacks against Christianity, and the furor was exacerbated when the
Christian Hwang Sayong was arrested. His famous silk letter. which outlined a
program for military aid from the emperor of France to protect Christianity in. Korea and an invitation to the Ch'ing emperor to appoint a Manchu prince to
govern Korea was discovered, and the dowager decided to execute a number of
Christians and burn their books. Several officials recommended reinforcing moral
teaching to strengthen Confucian orthodoxy against Christian subversion, and
in 1801 a member of the Inspector-General's Office proposed adopting com-
munity compacts and wine-drinking rites as the best means to do this, but the
recommendation did not elicit much reaction at court, and the dowager had
already decided that strengthening the five-family system (ogat'ong) of mutual
surveillance to ferret out all Christians would be sufficicntY'
Further intcrest in community compacts disappeared. but Tasan (Chong
Yagyong), one of the scholars arrested for propagating Christianity in 1801 and
sent into exile until 1818, wrote the text of a community compact and included
it in his famous reform treatise, A Bookfrom the Heart 011 Governing the Peo-
ple (Mofl[<min sim.wJ), probably in 182 I. Chastened, no doubt, by his close escape
from execution, Tasan composed a text that contained nothing new and conf ormcd
fully with traditional Confucian standards of behavior.
Nevertheless, Tasan warned his readers that the community compact could
easily become a force for evil if a well-intentioned but untalented magistrate
appointed members of the elite to be the hcad and other officials of the organi-
zation because they would use their authority to dominate the community, intim-
idate the people, demand grain and drink, expose secrets, prejudice the
adjudication of lawsuits. and use the people to till their own fields. The local
elite would possihly split into two factions and wreck community harmony: one
faction that controlled the school and another that ran the community compact.
Furthermore. since almost everyone could be counted on to steal or act selfishly
in a time of famine, the people could only be controlled and steered hack to
goodness by lhe intervention of a wise magistrate.