雜科試取에 對한 一考

On the System of Selecting Technical Officials(雜科試取) during the Yi Dynasty

This paper attempts to examine the system of selecting technical service officials in eight different fields(入學) either by state examination or by recruitment during the Yi Dynasty and analyze the actual state of the system. The writer’s attention is focused particularly on the fact that over a period of nearly 400 years, the selection of technical service officials was made strictly pursuant to the law which governed it. This fact forms a striking conrtast with the higher civil and military service examinations(文ㆍ武科), after the middle period of the Yi Dynasty, by which respective officials were selected without regard to the number allowed. In the case of selecting military service officials(武科), particularly, the ceiling of their number was totally disregarded. Of course, training of technical service officials involved a variety of characteristics as compared with that of civil or military service officials, and the positions available for them were greatly limited, but the basic reason for the fact is found rather in the rigid class discriminations during the Yi Dynasty, based on social status. The system of selecting officials in the fields of medicine(醫科), interpreting(譯科), and accounting(籌學), after the era of Yonsankun(燕山君), attests clearly to a negative aspect of the stagnant Yi Dynasty.