PART V CONCLUSION 763
the absence of those reforms his plans for bureaucratic organization were
unlikely to achieve their purpose because expanding the control of the exist-
ing yangban bureaucrats over the king would only exacerbate the problems of
the current age. Thus, when the only serious attempt at bureaucratic reform
was carried out in the late Choson dynasty under the Taewongun in the 1860s,
the Taewongun expanded the power of the throne at the expense of both bureau-
crats and yangban.
RECTIFICATION OF PERSONNEL PROCEDURESYu also presumed that if he abolished the examination system and replaced it
with a system of official schools to recruit an elite of morally superior men for
government service, the yangban bureaucrats would be replaced by men devoted
to the public good rather than their own private interest. He reinforced this plan
by providing for reform of the process of reviewing the performance of officials
in which his first priority was to eliminate consideration of the pedigree (munji)
of all candidates for office from consideration and open opportunity to men of
talent. His second was to insist upon the use of recommendation as a means of
by-passing the deficiencies of current review procedures, and his third was to
institute a new training institute for new candidates for office in the capital.
Although all these procedures were based on the recruitment of men grounded
in Confucian standards of morality rather than competency or efficiency in admin-
istration, they would have undoubtedly improved the quality of officials over
the current crop. Unfortunately, the yangban in control ofthe bureaucracy would
have had to sign their own political death warrants to carry it out, and there was
as yet no crisis crucial enough to induce them to do it.CENTRAL BUREAUCRATIC CONTROL VERSUS LOCAL AUTONOMYYu's advocacy of the superiority of bureaucratic over royal authority in the con-
duct of government suggested that he was thoroughly committed to thoroughly
centralized bureaucracy as the key to good government. In fact, he deplored the
inadequacy of provincial administration because of the temporary aspects of
provincial governors and the short terms of service of both governors and mag-
istrates, but his discussion of local government reveals that his strong commit-
ment to local autonomy illustrated his skepticism about the probity and reliability
of central bureaucrats.
As always he drew on traditional lore about the importance of local auton-
omy and self-government as a means of checking the tyranny of the central
bureaucrat. He could see that bureaucratic maladministration had converted
agencies for ordinary credit and relief into institutions of debtor oppression, so
he proposed that the current official grain loan system be replaced by an ever-
normal price stabilization system that removed magistrates from functioning