1016 EPILOGUEerbated their economic hardship. By the end of the eighteenth century, the time
had become ripe for some kind of remedial action. The armchair statecraft schol-
ars in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, often referred to as the Sirhak
school, were by no means unified on the solution. Some like Tasan (Chong Yagy-
ong) backed the radical nationalization and redistribution plan, but others like
Songho (Yi Ik) opted for a more conservative land limitation system than Yu
Hyongwon's. Most serious officials dismissed redistribution as unrealistic
because the defense of landed property had become impregnable. The turning
point was reached in the 17905 when King CMnjo put out a call for advice on
the land question but he failed to take any serious action to alleviate the prob-
lems of land distribution and taxation. The land problem carried over into the
nineteenth century with disastrous consequences, because it was identified as
one of the three major causes of the Imsul rebellion of 1862.
The third of the major causes of that rebellion was the maladministration of
credit, loans, and relief handled mainly by district magistrates and their clerks.
As more peasant smallholders were reduced to the margin of subsistence by the
loss of land to landlords and then driven over the edge to starvation by natural
disaster, they were reduced to dependency on relief payments and loans. Unable
to repay the loans because of their marginal economic position, the loans were
turned over and the interest payments became a permanent tax. When rebellion
broke out in 1862 the peasants directed their ire against the district magistrates
and their clerks, the ones responsible for the administration of the land and mil-
itary service taxes and the collection of interest payments on loans.
In the recovery plan of the Taewongun in the I 860s, a few ofYu Hyongwon's
recommendations for action played a small role. His plan for nationalization
and redistribution was simply ignored, only a half-hearted effort was made to
carry out a cadastral survey to register cultivated land for fairer collection of the
land tax, and his suggestion for the adoption of recommendation in the selec-
tion of officials was tried as a supplement to the examination system. The Tae-
wongun was the first to mint multiple denomination cash. as the more advanced
eighteenth century experts on currency had advocated, but that policy was con-
trary to Yu's advice to limit metallic currency to penny cash. His prediction that
it would produce inflation came true.
On the other hand, his idea of extending military service to all male adults but
officials, modified in the course ofthe debate in the eighteenth century to an exten-
sion of the military service tax to yangban households, was finally adopted. And
his recommendation for the transfer of relief and loan administration from the
district magistrates to the leadership of prominent gcntry was adopted.
It was not to he expected that Yu's seventeenth-century perspective would
have remained relevant to nineteenth-century circumstance, but Yu did inspire
a number of well-known reformers in the eighteenth century, and the germ of
several of his reform ideas was preserved in the frost of two centuries of admin-
istrative deterioriation, recalled to life by the Taewongun to save the dynasty
from collapse.