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Assuming Office 39 that he send his man to attend to them with all due propriety at the time of his inauguration. When all these processes are complete, the magistrate finally returns to his office and receives courtesy calls from his staff for the beginning of the day. CHAPTER : CONDUCTING OFFICIAL DUTIES Early in the Morning of the Following Day the Magistrate Takes a Seat and Starts Working. The magistrate examines the reports to be sent to the superior office and signs them right away if they are well made in accordance with the precedents. However , if they contain matters that need to be discussed further, he orders them to be revised and rewritten on the basis of the initial drafts made by the clerks. In signing decrees concerning the people, the magistrate must be extremely careful, checking every word and phrase. He first consults the Six Codes of Governance (Yukchŏn) and the thirty-six statutes concerning the six ministries and makes sure that what is in the document is completely free from intrigues and deceptions. Then he finally signs the document. If he finds anything suspicious , he should not be ashamed to ask his subordinates questions. He summons the chief clerk and the clerk in charge of the matter and conducts a thorough investigation ; after making sure that he fully understands the matter, he proceeds to inscribe his signature. I have often observed that the most foolish magistrate is the one who pretends to know what he is doing and is ashamed to ask his subordinates questions. Hence, even though he has some doubts in his mind, he just swallows them and signs the document, which makes him fall into the tricks of his subordinates. If the drafted reports are based on wrongful precedents that have been handed down and are very unreasonable in their nature, it is advisable to keep them on his table without signing them, unless they must urgently be dispatched, until he has an opportunity to rectify the problem. If the matters are too complicated to change easily, he should go ahead and sign the reports and start making reforms slowly. 99. Originally complied by Chŏng Tojŏn and Cho Chun in the early Chosŏn period, it was revised and expanded during the reign of T’aejong. The revised versions were titled Basic Six Codes (Wŏn yukchŏn) and Supplement Six Codes (Sok yukchŏn), respectively (Lee, 172–173). Six Codes of Governance here appears to refer to one of them. 100. The “thirty-six statutes” probably indicates article 36. The six ministries or six boards (yukcho ) were the Ministries of Personnel, Revenue, Rites, War, Justice, and Works. The six-ministry system, along with the State Council and the Royal Secretariat, was perhaps the most important administrative structure during the Chosŏn dynasty. They had the authority to memorialize the king directly on matters under their purview and then to put into execution his decisions (Lee, New History of Korea, 175.) 40 book I If some of the men who followed his carriage committed wrongdoings on the road, this is a good day to hold hearings on their misdemeanor cases and release them with reproaches. To give them corporal punishment is not desirable . If the nature of their wrongdoings is too serious for them to be forgiven, he orders them to be imprisoned and lets them wait for trial. He avoids ordering punishment within ten days from his inauguration so that he can be known to the people as a man of generosity and benevolence who is neither tough nor severe. On This Day the Magistrate Gives an Order to the Gentry and the People to Make Reports on the Problems of Their Communities and Asks for Their Opinions to Solve Them. The magistrate sends out the following official notice to all the gentry and the people of various classes in his district: “The present magistrate wants the people to know that since taking office, which was possible only because of the excessive grace of the government conferred upon him, he is deeply concerned and troubled day and night and lacks confidence in discharging his duty. Therefore, he wants to know about any irregularities that cause pain and suffering to the people , whether they are new or old. Since I am certain that there are some, let five or six men in each of the administrative units who are intelligent enough to understand the affairs of the world get together and...

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