NOTES TO CHAPTER 9 108S
According to Yi Yonghun, Chos6n hugi sahoe ky6ngjesa [The social and economic
history of Late Choson] (Seoul: Han'gilsa, (988), p. 234, a book consulted after the gal-
leys were finished in this volume, the estimated average production in Kyongsang Province
around 19IO was 20.79 bushels/acre of hulled rice, about double Chinese yields in the
early twentieth century, but production in Kyongsang was far higher than the average for
all of Korea.
- Or 49 bushels/ha. See Hishimoto ChOji, Chosen-mai no kenkyu, p. 7.
- Tony Michell, "Fact and Hypothesis in Yi Dynasty Economic History: The Demo-
graphic Dimension," Korean Studies Forum, no. 6 (Winter-Spring 1979- 8 0), pp. 77-79,
and table of estimated population during the Yi dynasty, pp. 71-72. Michell admitted
that his estimates might be inaccurate because of underreporting in the censuses, but he
insisted on the validity of the trends shown. He, therefore, ignored population totals and
multiplied the number of households recorded by 7.95. a figure consistent with the rad-
ical estimates of Kwon Tai-hwan in the Population and Development Studies Center. Seoul
National University, The Population of Korea (Seoul: Seoul National University. (975).
and Han 'guk sahoe, in 'gu wa palch()n [Korean society. population and development]
(Seoul: Seoul National University Press, 1978).
Ishi Yoshikuni supplied a table of adjusted population estimates for 1640-q80 on
p. 53, but his estimates for the eighteenth century are about 4 million less than
Michell's, and he claimed that population leveled off at 7.28 million people about 1730.
I find Michell's discussion more convincing. See Ishi Yoshikuni, Kankoku nojinkiJ zilka
no bunseki [An analysis of population growth in Korea] (Tokyo: Keiso, 1972), pp. 46-
49,5 6. - Bray, Science and Civilisation in China, vol. 6, pt. 2, Agriculture:60I.
- Han Woo-keun, "Songho Yi Ik ili sasang yon'gu" [A study of the thought of Songho
Yi IkJ, in Yijo hugi lii sahoe wa sa sang (Seoul: Uryu munhwasa, I96I), pp. 141-42,
144-4 8.
4I. Ibid., pp. 203-1 I, 2I5, 238-45. - Ibid., pp. 246-48. He did not believe that Shang Yang ofthe Ch'in dynasty destroyed
the well-field system by "breaking down" the embankments between the well fields
because, following Chu Hsi, he thought that Shang Yang had only leveled those embank-
ments to open the fields up to irrigation. - Han, "Songho Yi Ik ili Sasang Yon'gu," pp. 250-54. Takahashi Toru wrote that Yi
was not completely clear about the size of the permanent plot, and he estimated that he
must have envisioned a plot in the range of 1-2 kyong. Ibid., p. 254. - YfJngjo sillok 5I:8a-b, Yongjo 16.2.kapsin (1740), cited in Han, "Songho Yi Ik ili
sasang yon'gu," p. 249. - Yi calculated productivity at 60 mal for every I mal planted, except in the south-
ern provinces where broadcast seeding instead of transplanting reduced the yield by 1/3
to 40 mal per mal planted. Han Woo-keun, however, pointed out that in the eighteenth
century, Yi Chunghwan, in his T'aengniji described the production from one mal of seed
as varying from 60 mal for the hest to 30 mal for the worst, a 2/1 ratio for the highest
and lowest grades that would have prevented the equality of taxation that Yi hoped for,
yet under Yi's scheme the owners of the least fertile land would have been undertaxed