A History of Korea (40 page)

There were two censoring organs—the Sah
ŏ
nbu, or Office of the Inspector-General, and the Saganw
ŏ
n, or Office of the Censor-General. The former was created to scrutinize and criticize government policy and the actions of officials, whereas the latter censured the conduct of the king. These two oversight bodies were joined by the Hongmun’gwan, or Office of Propagation and Literature, to form the so-called sam-sa, or three offices. Whereas the Sah
ŏ
nbu was responsible for criticizing daily political issues and ferreting out officials’ dishonesty and maladministration, the Saganw
ŏ
n complained to the sovereign in the event of wrongful or improper action or policy, and thus imposed considerable restraint on arbitrary actions of the monarch. The Hongmun’gwan, which succeeded the Chipp’y
ŏ
nj
ŏ
n that Sejo had abolished in 1456, oversaw the royal library and served as an advisory body to the king as well as a research institute for the study of Confucian classics. It also authored major state documents. Overall, this was a delicate system of checks and balances that prevented concentration of political power in any one branch of government. Officials who served in the three offices were generally younger and of lower rank but they gained strong academic reputations, and these three offices offered the fastest route to the highest posts.

Other important offices included the S
ŭ
ngj
ŏ
ngw
ŏ
n, or Royal Secretariat; the Ch’unch’ugwan; the
Ŭ
ig
ŭ
mbu, or Royal Investigation Bureau; and the Hans
ŏ
ngbu, or Capital Office. The S
ŭ
ngj
ŏ
ngw
ŏ
n’s primary role was to transmit royal decrees to the appropriate offices and present the king with petitions from officialdom and the populace. Court historians of the Ch’unch’ugwan recorded daily occurrences in the court, made verbatim records of royal conversations, and were empowered to criticize the king and keep him under close observation. The
Ŭ
ig
ŭ
mbu dealt with treason and other serious cases that concerned the monarch, and the Hans
ŏ
ngbu was responsible for running the capital.

Peculiar to the Chos
ŏ
n’s political system was the institution of
sangso,
or memorials to the throne. Every Chos
ŏ
n official was able to send a memorial to the king, and the general population could memorialize the government on its policies or unjust treatment. Local government transmitted these memorials
from the people to the central government, and in turn the central government reviewed these individually to understand the people’s will regarding its policy.

In 1413 Kory
ŏ
’s former division of the country was reorganized into eight provinces: Ky
ŏ
nggi, Ch’ungch’
ŏ
ng, Ky
ŏ
ngsang, Ch
ŏ
lla, Hwanghae, Kangw
ŏ
n, P’y
ŏ
ngan, and Hamgil (Hamgy
ŏ
ng). These were divided into more than 350 counties of several types, specifically pu, mok, kun, and hy
ŏ
n. Chos
ŏ
n elevated Kory
ŏ
’s special administrative units—the hyang, so, and pugok—to the higher status of counties. Chos
ŏ
n regarded the figure “eight” as sacred and preferred it, as it represented a “tree” and symbolized the kingdom. According to the Naturalists of the yin-yang school in China, the “tree” was one of “five elements” or “five powers” (along with fire, earth, metal, and water), varying combinations of which constituted all of nature.
²
The counties numbered 350 to represent the days of the year.

In the Kory
ŏ
period central government officials were not sent to all the local administrative units, but Chos
ŏ
n’s central government dispatched its officials to every county to maintain central control over the local inhabitants. A governor, called
kwanch’alsa,
or
kamsa,
as well as
pangbaek,
was appointed to each province, which, as noted, was subdivided into counties of various types: pu, headed by the
puyun
or
pusa,
administrative offices in charge of major cities; mok, administered by
moksa,
administrative offices that governed the large counties; and kun and hy
ŏ
n, headed by the
kunsu
and
hy
ŏ
lly
ŏ
ng
or
hy
ŏ
n’gam,
respectively, administrative offices that were responsible for the smaller counties. Often called the “people’s shepherd,” the county magistrate governed the local populace on behalf of the central government; his duties, known as the
sury
ŏ
ng ch’il-sa,
or seven affairs of a county magistrate, included promoting agriculture, increasing the population by encouraging childbirth, advancing education and military preparedness, collecting land and tribute taxes, mobilizing corvee labor, ensuring fair justice, and maintaining public peace and order. His principal duty, however, was to collect taxes and mobilize corvee labor for the central government.

Empowered with broad administrative and judicial duties, the provincial and county officials were appointed for fixed terms limited to one year for provincial governors and five years for county magistrates in order to prevent corruption. Also, central government officials were never assigned to posts in their home districts. In local provincial and county administrations, duties were allocated among the
yuk-pang,
or six chambers, which included personnel, military affairs, taxation, punishment, rites, and engineering, modeled on the six ministries in the capital. Provincial governors and county magistrates were reassigned frequently, providing an essential connection and continuity between the central government and the local population to
yuk-pang
functionaries, called hyangni or aj
ŏ
n. Not included in the civil service structure, these men often inherited their posts and served for life. Native to the area where they served, they played an important liaison role with the agricultural villages where the bulk of the population lived. Hyangni had also existed in Kory
ŏ
, and at the time they were a powerful local elite. In Chos
ŏ
n, however, members of the hyangni class only acted as aides to the provincial governor or county magistrate and were barred from rising to yangban status.

MAP 6.1.
Chos
ŏ
n

A self-governing organ existed for local populations. The central government organized the
Yuhyangso,
later renamed the Hyangch’
ŏ
ng, or Local Agency, in each county, which was comprised of its leading residents whose opinions wielded considerable influence on the local government. This office was directed by an overseer, called the
chwasu,
and his assistants, called
py
ŏ
lgam.
It assisted the magistrate, edified local inhabitants, and reported functionaries to the magistrate for misconduct. In short, the Yuhyangso or Hyangch’
ŏ
ng functioned as a local assembly. In Seoul, meanwhile, each county was represented by another office, called the Ky
ŏ
ngjaeso, or Capital Liaison Office. Headed by an influential person dispatched from his county, it served as a link between the central government and the Yuhyangso.

This refined system of government worked well in the early period and contributed to the realization of Chos
ŏ
n’s golden age. Power centers in the central government, however, were increasingly transformed into battlegrounds for high-level government officials. Political infighting and factional struggles within the central government bureaucracy led to continual vicious bloodlettings.

The early Chos
ŏ
n period witnessed the reinforcement of its national defense force. Immediately after the founding of the new dynasty, members of the royal household, merit subjects, and others still retained their own personal armed forces. In 1400 T’aejong, who held real power under his older brother Ch
ŏ
ngjong, abolished these private armies, transforming them into national defense forces. From the beginning the Chos
ŏ
n kingdom implemented the universal conscription system recruiting soldiers from among commoners. Incumbent government officials and Confucian students were exempt from
military service but, otherwise, every able-bodied man from 16 to 60 years of age was required to serve as a soldier or as a sustainer who would provide economic support to conscript soldiers on active duty. The latter generally paid the nation a bolt of cotton cloth a year.Regular army soldiers served for two or three months annually. These peasant-soldiers were called up to active duty in Seoul or at the garrisons or navy garrisons in the provinces and then returned to their farms on a rotational basis. There were also professional military men who usually guarded the royal palace and defended the capital, or became low-ranking commanding officers in the local army commands. They were selected through tests of their military skills.

In 1457 King Sejo divided the country into five military districts—the center, east, west, south, and north—and integrated the various army units scattered throughout the country into five
wi,
or commands. In 1466 the king placed the five commands under the newly established Owi toch’ongbu, or Five Military Commands Headquarters, which was given authority over Chos
ŏ
n’s central forces commanded by a civil official.

Ever since the reign of King Sejo, each province had its own army command, called
py
ŏ
ngy
ŏ
ng
, and navy command, called
suy
ŏ
ng
, each placed under a commanding officer. Under these py
ŏ
ngy
ŏ
ng and suy
ŏ
ng were a number of garrisons, called
chin,
and navy garrisons, called
p’ochin
. Hamgy
ŏ
ng and Ky
ŏ
ngsang provinces, which were exposed to Nuzhen (
Yain
) and Japanese incursions, had two army commands and two navy commands, and Ch
ŏ
lla province had two navy commands because of its long coastline. Chos
ŏ
n also constructed citadels in more than 100 strategically important towns, strengthening its defense in the countryside.

The strong national defense system established in the fifteenth century gradually weakened since the sixteenth century. Thus, in 1583, before the massive Japanese invasion of Chos
ŏ
n, the well-known Neo-Confucian scholar-official Yi I proposed that the government build military forces numbering up to 100,000.

Because of Confucian reverence for education, the Chos
ŏ
n kingdom stressed education, which started very early as students had to learn the extraordinarily difficult classical Chinese language by rote. In their childhood, yangban youth attended the
s
ŏ
dang
, or village schools, where they learned the basic Chinese characters with
Ch’
ŏ
njamun
as the primer, practiced writing them, and studied the basic Chinese classics. They then advanced to one of the four
puhak
,
or section schools, in Seoul: the
tong-hak
, or eastern school; the
s
ŏ
-hak
, or western school; the
nam-hak
, or southern school; and the
chung-hak
, or central school. Alternatively, they went on to the
hyanggyo
, or county school, established in each county. They studied Confucian classics, specifically the Four Books and Five Classics of China. After several years of study, the Confucian students in these schools were qualified to sit for the
saengjin-kwa
(
so-kwa
), or licentiate examinations. Those who passed, depending on which examination they took, were called
saengw
ŏ
n,
or classics licentiates, or
chinsa,
or literary licentiates. These licentiates could enter the S
ŏ
nggyun’gwan, or National Confucian Academy, in Seoul, which had a capacity to accept 200 students, or sit directly for
mun-kwa,
or the civil examination. Students attending the S
ŏ
nggyun’gwan were the privileged elite whose objective was to prepare for the kwag
ŏ
examination.

The Kory
ŏ
kingdom had already adopted the kwag
ŏ
examination system as a means of selecting competent officials, and the Chos
ŏ
n dynasty placed even greater importance on it. Chos
ŏ
n strictly restricted privileged appointments to the sons of merit subjects and officials of the 2nd rank and higher, and usually assigned the beneficiaries of the institution to the lower-ranking posts. Therefore, unless one passed through the national examinations, particularly the civil examinations, the path to higher office was virtually closed. The subject matter of the kwag
ŏ
consisted almost entirely of the Chinese classics, history, and belles-lettres. In theory, anyone of commoner status was qualified to sit for the examination; in reality, however, members of the yangban class monopolized the examination, because the educational opportunities needed to pass the examination were available almost exclusively to them. In fact, the commoner population generally lacked the time for studying the difficult Chinese classics.