Looking carefully into the condition of things, the king found many abuses that required correction. He ordered that the army be better clothed; he examined into the cases of many of the prisoners of state and liberated not a few; he remitted the tax on hemp and ginseng in Ham-gyŭng Province; he remitted the tax on the gold mines at Tan-ch‘ŭn which had amounted to a thousand ounces a year; he lowered the land tax in Ch’ung-ch’ŭng Province. These voluntary retrenchments called for economy at the capital and the king discontinued the royal stables, to meet the falling off in revenue.
A word is necessary here as to the complexion of the political parties. The old Tong-in had gone to pieces and in its place we find the Nam-in, the So-ron and the Sŭ-buk parties. We have in all then the
| Nam-in | with | Hŭ Mok | as | leader |
| So-ron | ” | Yun Cheung | ” | ” |
| No-ron | ” | Song Si-ryŭl | ” | ” |
| Sŭ-buk | ” | Yu Yöng-gyŭng | ” | ” |
Among these the names of the Nam-in and No-ron were the most prominent and their leaders, Hŭ Mok and Song Si-ryŭl were deadly enemies of each other. There was no intermarriage between these different parties. Each had its separate color. The Nam-in was red, the So-ron blue, the No-ron white and the Sŭ-buk black. It was not the men but the women who wore these distinctive colors and even to this day it is common to see the party colors in the collars of women’s coats. The men were distinguished by the shape of the coat collar. The No-rons and Nam-ins had a collar cut square at the bottom; the So-rons had a bulging curve at the bottom and the Sŭ-buk had a plain curve. These things sound childish but in those days they meant life and death. The number of men who have been sacrificed upon the altar of party strife mounts up into the hundreds of thousands. The violent and unreasonable strife between them prevented anything like concerted action when the country was threatened from without. They made it impossible for any man to be judged according to his true merits. They effectually blocked the efforts put forth by honest men to secure a clean and honest government. There is nothing more despicable in political life than the continued excitement of fierce passions when there is no principle at stake and when personal aggrandisement is the only goal.
But at the time of which we write the No-ron party, with Song Si-ryŭl at its head, was so overwhelmingly predominant that party strife was for a time almost held in abeyance. The remarkable character of this reign is largely due to his efforts. The reign from beginning to end was one grand march of progress, reform following reform with such rapidity that the reign fairly scintillates with them. To realise how great a part Song Si-ryŭl played in these movements it is necessary to know the enormous power wielded by a Prime Minister in Korea, especially when he enjoys the entire confidence of the king. His power to keep the king informed or misinformed makes him practically the ruler of the land. That Song Si-ryŭl was a real reformer is shown by the frequency with which, during many a decade after his death, statesmen would break out in panegyrics on his memory. It is shown also in the passionate hatred of political enemies who saw in him a successful rival. We have little evidence that this man ever lowered himself to the plane of common party politics. Let us then review the fifteen years of this reign and see the stamp of his great personality[personality] upon it.
We have already mentioned some of the reforms inaugurated. First he gained a signal victory over his rival Hŭ Mok[Hŭ Mok] who tried to have him degraded because of his position in regard to the period of the queen’s mourning. Song Si-ryŭl went over the whole ground again, cited history in support of his views and silenced by a simple and conclusive argument the captious criticism of his detractors, but he showed his greatness in not using his power to have his enemies killed, an act of generosity which later cost him his life. The following are some of the reforms instituted, and we give them here in full, for they afford a deep insight into the condition of the people.
It had been very common for men to leave their families and go off to some monastery and become monks. Now, the Buddhist monasteries are the poor-houses of Korea. Beggary is uncommon, but often, when a man has no visible means of support, he will shave his head, don the garb of a monk and spend part of the year at some monastery and the remainder in receiving donations from the people in the shape of rice or money. To do this they necessarily desert their families. To counteract this evil the king sent forth an[an] edict that no more men with family ties should desert them in this way, and furthermore that all monks who had families living should doff their religious garb and come back to the world and support their families like honest men.
The ajun is a peculiar excrescence on the body politic of Korea. He is the prefect’s clerk, or factor, or agent, or pimp, or jack-of-all-trades. He is in a large sense the incarnation of all his master’s vices, to which he adds many of his own. A royal edict was promulgated which brought a host of these men to justice and compelled them to disgorge much of their illgotten[illgotten] gains, which were given back, so far as possible, to the people from whom they had been extorted. In this case the reform was notable because of the limit which was put to it. Ordinarily in Korea, when a man is caught and made a public example of in this way, the law extends the punishment to the near and remote relatives of the culprit, and many innocent men suffer with the guilty; but in this case only actual offenders were punished. It was strictly forbidden to call to account any man’s relative because of his fault.
For many years all the salt factories and fisheries had been groaning under a heavy tax which went to support an almost unlimited number of the king’s relatives; but now these taxes were entirely remitted. We are not told what the relatives did. Let us hope they went to work.
It had become customary for the tax collectors to demand a poll tax not only from grown men, who alone were taxable according to law, but from children as well. This abuse was likewise remedied.