Disillusioned, he died a recluse.
From the inception of the Koryŏ dynasty (918–1392) an expanded role for Confucian doctrine was envisioned. In the celebrated "Ten Injunctions" addressed to his descendants by the dynastic founder, Wang Kŏn (r. 918–943), Buddhism was chosen to govern spiritual matters, geomancy was to be used for prophecy and prognostication, and Confucianism was chosen as the guiding principle in the sociopolitical sphere. Two of the injunctions are direct restatements of traditional Confucian precepts. One declares that the people's livelihood and welfare should be the foremost concern of government while another admonishes the occupant of the throne to heed ministerial advice in fulfilling this task.
In the late tenth century the government was reorganized into a centralized bureaucratic structure. Local officials were appointed by the central government. Among the long-term results were the emergence of the civil and military bureaucracy as a social force and the transformation of the Koryŏ polity into an aristocratic-bureaucratic state in which the power of the ruling elite derived from government position rather than an ancestral seat. This change reflected the Confucian rhetoric of government; it conformed to the hierarchical order at whose summit reigned the sovereign as paterfamilias of the state with corresponding responsibilities to and respect from his subject-children.
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