“The Minister for Finance, being vested with the control of the finances of the Government, will have charge of all matters relating to accounts, revenue, and expenditure, taxes, national debts, the currency, banks, and the like, and will have supervision over the finances of each local administration” (Ord. 54, § I).
Under this Minister there is a Taxation Bureau with three sections—Land Tax, Excise, and Customs.[47] The ordinances connected with the remodelled system of taxation and the salaries and expenses of officials are very numerous and minute. The appropriation actually in money for the Sovereign’s Privy Purse was fixed at $500,000.
War Office
The Minister for War, who must be a general officer, has charge of the military administration of an army lately fixed at 6,000 men, and the chief control of men and matters in the army, and is to exercise supervision over army divisions, and all buildings and forts under his Department. The new military arrangements are very elaborate.
Ministry of Education
In this important Department, besides the Minister and Vice-Minister and heads of Bureaux and Sections, there are three special Secretaries who act as Inspectors of Schools, and an official specially deputed to compile and select text-books.
Besides the Minister’s Secretariat, there are the Education Bureau, which is concerned with primary, normal, intermediary, foreign language, technical and industrial schools, and students abroad; and a Compilation Bureau, concerned with the selection, translation, and compilation of text-books; the purchase, preservation, and arrangement of volumes, and the printing of books.
Under this Department has been placed the Confucian College, an institution of the old régime, the purpose of which was to attend to the Temple of Literature, in which, as in China, the Memorial Tablets of Confucius, Mencius, and the Sages are honored, and to encourage the study of the classical books. The subjects for study are the “Three Classics,” “Four Books and Popular Commentary,” Chinese Composition, Outlines of Chinese History—of the Sung, Yüan, and Ming Dynasties. To meet the reformed requirements, this College has been reorganized, and the students, who must be between the ages of twenty and forty, “of good character, persevering, intelligent, and well acquainted with affairs,” are in addition put through a course of Korean and foreign annals, Korean and foreign geography, and arithmetic.
Ministry of Justice
The Minister of Justice has charge of judicial matters, pardons and restorations to rank, instructions for public prosecution, and supervision over Special Courts, High Courts, and District Courts; and the Department forms a High Court of Justice for the hearing of certain appeals.