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Administration of Military Affairs 593 the amount of money each new soldier is required to pay during the middle roll call at the provincial army and orders the clerks in charge of leading the troops to make detailed reports on the expenses that are actually paid, directly handling the expenditures and transactions. Then the people like kach’ogwan cannot tyrannize over the traveling soldiers. Furthermore, if he repeatedly admonishes them about the law of capital punishment with regard to extortion in the army and prevents them from being reckless, the people in his domain will greatly benefit and rejoice. The law of sending rotating service troops to a distant place 1,000 li away was not reasonable from the beginning. The current problems are only an extension of abuses that started a long time ago. Finding the military system of the Royal Division and the Forbidden Guard Division problematic, our great former king, upon ascending the throne, expressed his concerns about it on a number of occasions , but his subjects failed to obey his orders, and the problem still remains the same as it was before, which is a real shame. Since this issue is more fully dealt with in the section on the military system in Design for Good Government, I will not discuss it any further. CHAPTER : TRAINING SOLDIERS So-Called Training Soldiers Is an Important Part of Military Preparation and Mainly Consists of Training for Various Military Performances [Choyŏn] and Training to Follow the Signals of Military Banners [Kyogi]. Mao Yuanyi stated: “Unless the soldiers are trained, a battle formation cannot be made properly; neither attack nor defense nor making military camps nor carrying out battles nor conducting naval war is possible; neither can a fire attack produce its due effect nor can horses run, no matter how many there may be; military provisions are only wasted for nothing. In speaking of military preparation , military training is considered most important. Training starts with mobilizing soldiers, for it is impossible without them. Once the soldiers are recruited, they are taught the rules of the sog’o army, military units under the command of local magistrates, as well as prohibitions and discipline related to their training. Well-trained soldiers are ones whose eyes are quick to discern the signals of military banners and whose ears are alert to the sound of gongs and drums, so their responses to the banners and sound signals should be consistent under all circumstances . Training consists of five steps: selecting soldiers, making formations , carrying out orders, training exercises by means of banners, and instruction in martial arts.” In my observation, the military training individually carried out in the counties and districts at the moment is simply training exercises by means of banners. 594 book VIII Mao Yuanyi also stated: “So-called training exercises by means of banners derive from an ancient hunting technique called hunting instruction. Since people in later years were unable to learn and practice that technique in their ordinary time, the technique was incorporated into a system. During the time of the Western Han dynasty, a competition to test training in the military technique was held every September. During the era of the Eastern Han dynasty a military training was held on the Onset of Autumn to teach the people how to fight and make formations, and so forth. This training was all held in the eleventh month after the Tang and Song dynasties.” When Cheng Baizi became magistrate of Jincheng, he found that the army reserve soldiers of Hedong who were supposed to receive military training during their leisure season had no training despite the law; there was only a list of soldiers who participated only in name. After Cheng took over the district, the residents of Jincheng finally became elite troops. When Yi Tongjik became magistrate of Ŭiju, he carried out his job very well in entertaining the envoys from Ching China and handling the commodities traded on the national border. From the Chŏngch’uk year [1637] on, our country tried to conceal its military activities from the Chinese, and the border in the west was particularly more strict in security surveillance. Yi also established a local militia squad [po’o] in every subdistrict and trained the residents for warfare . Twice a year, during spring and autumn, he used hunting as a way of training them and made his army ready for a potential crisis. The following happened when Cho Kyewŏn became magistrate of Suwŏn...

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