Admonitions on Governing the People (Mongmin simseo)

A large practical manual for county magistrates by Jeong Yak-yong, known as Dasan, completed in 1818 near the end of his eighteen years of exile in Gangjin. Dasan, a leading figure of the Silhak (practical learning) movement, explained that he called it a book of the heart because, as an exile, he had the will to care for the people but no office in which to do it. Its twelve parts, each of six articles, follow a magistrate's career: taking up the post, disciplining oneself, devotion to public duty and love for the people, then six parts matching the six ministries of government (personnel, revenue, rites, military affairs, punishments and public works), then famine relief and leaving office. Each article combines precepts from the classics with examples from Chinese and Korean history and Dasan's own observations of how clerks and officials exploited farmers. Its central theme is that officials exist for the sake of the people, not the reverse.

It is one of the great Confucian works on public ethics, and its demand for honest, frugal and humane officials still reads as a practical guide to integrity in government.