조선후기 수령의 업무 능력과 부세 수취의 자율권 -조선후기 暗行御史 書啓를 중심으로-

Abstract

This paper presents the analysis results of Seogye, an assessment report on local officials(local governors) by royal secret investigators, during the second half of Joseon. The local governors examined in the study were total 1,123 and were assessed in eight items, which include good administration that was overall evaluation and individual evaluation items such as Jeonjeong, military administration, Hwanjeong, relief, penal administration, welfare, control of Hyangris, and odd jobs. As a result, the number of local governors performing good administration both in overall and individual evaluation continued to rise toward the 19th century. Given the reliability of the Seogye data prepared by royal secret investigators, two contrasting results can be inferred as follows: first, it is possible that Seogye, an assessment report on local governors by royal secret investigators, was nothing but formalities due to the confusion of Sedo politics. On the other hand, it could be possible that local governors' exploitations of common people were not as severe as known before. However, there is one thing that should never be neglected: when a single local governor was incompetent and corrupt, he would damage the entire guns and hyeons. Even though the percentage of local governors negatively assessed dropped in the 18th century, as much as 30~40% of local governors still received negative evaluations in the 19th century. The number cannot be ignored. Negative evaluation of a local governor by a royal secret investigator, however, does not always mean that he was greedy or incompetent. There were many local governors that took a different position especially on the administration of tax collection from the central government. Not collecting Hwangok lent to people due to a bad harvest or not recruiting new soldiers in case of military deaths was directly connected to the reduction of national taxes and not to be tolerated by the central government. Such acts, however, would lessen the tax burden on the common people and be regarded as the practice of virtuous Confucian ruling. The dichotomy of local governor evaluation by royal secret investigators demonstrates those aspects well. It was because of such a perception that many local governors would risk punishments from the central government and carried out tax administration opposite to its position.