764 REFORM OF GOVERNMENT ORGANIZATION
as creditors and foreclosers of mortgages, and he transferred authority for relief
and loans to subdistrict agencies run by prominent local leaders rather than mag-
istrates or clerks.
Recognizing that the Sinitic style of bureaucratic organization left a big gap
between the district magistrate and the village peasants, he echoed the appeals
of many in the Chinese and Korean traditions for the creation of local commu-
nity compacts run by the people themselves, in which the community compact
would take over the enforcement of tax payments, the adjudication of low-level
criminal and civil cases, the implementation of relief, and the enforcement of
Confucian moral standards through group pressure, ostracism, and coercion.
Ironically, the point of local autonomy was not to defend local interest against
the center, especially when the local interests of the yangban landlords and slave-
holders interfered with state interest and the public good. Local autonomy, he
believed. would use the mobi lization ofthe people at the village level and mutual
aid and surveillance as a technique to rectify the weaknesses of the existing sys-
tem of local administration and enforce conformity with central objectives and
Confucian norms.
Yu, however, perceived that the interest of the center should be the public good,
in which the state acted as defender of the downtrodden peasant and slave against
the exploitation of corrupt magistrates and clerks, landlords, and slaveowners,
but in the real world the state competed with the landlords and slaveowners for
the exploitation of the peasants and slaves. That the community compact never
had a ghost'S chance of success in the real world only reflected the perception
by the local yangban that community compacts would harm their interests.
ELITE VERSUS MASS INTERESTS
Yu's bias against pedigree and inherited privilege did not mean that he rejected
hierarchy as a standard for social organization. He simply opposed the inheri-
tance of defects and blemishes by the innocent or special privileges by the unde-
serving. He was relentless in his attack on yangban privilege, but he was willing
to make compromises because he fully appreciated the difficulty of a sudden
transformation of social norms.
As a result, in working out rules for government reorganization he acknowl-
edged the status that attached to members of the royal family, to officials and
their sons, and to scholars and insisted on the respect owed them in public rites
and ceremonies. He hoped to open reasonable opportunity to nothoi, slaves, and
women to perform functions for state and community, and yet at the same time
not undermine powerful conventions. Nothoi would be allowed to hold office
and posts in the community compacts but this would not permit them to demand
equal status with legitimate sons. Slaves and women in the employ of the state
as clerks would be provided with salaries for the first time, but slaves still had
to show respect for their masters and line up separately from commoners in local
rituals, and women still owed obedience to their fathers and husbands and could