760 REFORM OF GOVERNMENT ORGANIZATION
concern for moral rectification occurred after the mid-sixteenth century with sup-
port from T'oegye. Yulgok. and Cho Hon, and King Sonjo even ordered com-
munity compacts adopted on a nationwide basis in 1573. but he suspended the
order almost immediately because of a severe famine. Even though these advo-
cates of community compacts were renowned for their concern for moral edu-
cation, their models placed a greater stress on punishment than persuasion and
introduced existing categories of social status discrimination into the compact
regulations.
After Hideyoshi's invasions, Korean kings provided little interest or support
for the adoption of compacts as a national policy. Yu Hyongwon's version of a
community compact constituted a revival of interest after a lapse of almost a
century, but his regulations did not transform their nature and purpose. They
did, however, reflect a difficult and agonizing conflict between his ideals of a
society based on morality and equality of opportunity and the reality of dis-
crimination against slaves. nothoi, and women, and special favor for the ruling
class. He attempted to solve those contradictions by compromise rather than rad-
ical revision.
He insisted that marks of inherited social status should not interfere with the
admittance of all members of a community to the community compact, that nothoi
of concubines (including concubines of slave status) be permitted to hold posts
in the compact organization as well as positions in the bureaucracy. He held that
status considerations should not be considered in lessening the punishments due
prestigious members of the community who violated the law or compact regu-
lations (as Yulgok had provided in his compact regulations), and that age should
consistently take precedence over social status in the conduct of ceremonies.
However. he still took care to seat slaves separately from commoners and nothoi
separately from legitimate sons in formal compact meetings and to provide spe-
cial status for bona fide scholars and officials and their sons and the elite of his
new community of moral worthies.
After Yu's death advocacy of the community compact was either mentioned
at court or tried privately in individual districts, but as a whole the movement
had lost its drive. In the late eighteenth century, An ChOngbok's community com-
pact was a model of social conservatism, not radical reform, and Tasan's com-
pact contained nothing of the radicalism of some of his other writings. Although
Yu Hyongwon's work on the subject was either mentioned or copied by some
individual compacts from the mid-eighteenth century right through the end of
the nineteenth, it had no discernible effect in producing the creation of any dis-
tinctly egalitarian compacts even though the number of slaves decreased sharply,
at least on the household registers.
Some might relegate the whole literature on community compacts to the cat-
egory of irrelevant trivia because it did not result in many examples of concrete
policy. but it was crucial to understanding some of the fundamental concepts
of governance and social discrimination in the Chos()n period. Contrary to the
arguments of some scholars, there is virtually no solid evidence in the compact