POST-IMJIN DEVELOPMENTS 105
model also to civilian organizations, such as "official colonies" (kwandunjon)
and yamen colonies (amun tunjOn) set up to support the State Council, Min-
istry of Taxation, and other capital agencies as well as local government offi-
cials.>8 It made special grants of tax-exempt land and prebends to the Royal
Treasury (N aesusa) and the four major palaces of queens in the capital, referred
to generally as the palace estates (kungbang).29 Finally, it levied a host of spe-
cial taxes to pay for particular needs, such as the rice tax for the "three types of
soldiers" (samsumi) adopted during the Imjin War (1592-98) to pay for the new
musketeers and other troops.
Not only did these surtaxes allow the central government an oblique means
to raise the land tax, but the conversion of the tribute tax to a surtax on land (the
taedongmi) throughout the seventeenth century eventually tripled the land tax
on landowners because this taedongmi "surtax" was about double the size of
the original land tax. As rational and beneficial as this reform was for the tax-
payer in the short run in eliminating many forms of injustice in the tribute sys-
tem, it boded ill in the long run because the state was unable to maintain periodic
cadastral surveys and a fair distribution of the tax burden. Since influential land-
lords were able to keep much of their arable and reclaimed land off the tax reg-
isters, the distribution of the tax burden became more regressive with time.Fragmentation of LandownershipFrom the beginning of the dynasty a gradual fragmentation oflandholdings took
place, but it was only revealed in 1960 by Kim Yongsop's study of a portion of
the land registers (yang 'an) of the mid-seventeenth and early eighteenth cen-
turies. The interpretation of the significance of the development of fragmented
landholdings has changed drastically in recent years. At first it was held by most
scholars that the Imjin War had destroyed the stability of the early Choson social
order and increased the poverty of the peasant population in general, and even-
tually ended in the tragedy of the large-scale peasant rebellions of 1812, 1862,
and 1894, in particular. Kim Yongsop, however, viewed the fragmentation of
landholding in a more positive vein as causing the disintegration of early Choson
social barriers and opening opportunities for the rise of entrepreneuriallandown-
ers who used rational methods to increase profits and move up the rungs of the
social ladder.
But is this optimistic view about the social effects of changing landholding
patterns accurate, and did it transform the goals of reformist statecraft thinkers
after the Imjin War? Did the reformers abandon their complaints about the mald-
istribution of property and wealth and their appeal for a restoration of some ver-
sion of nationalization and distribution in the spirit of the well-field or equal-field
systems? Did they issue a call for more freedom in the purchase and sale of land,
the pursuit of wealth in the economic sphere, and greater social mobility based
on equal opportunity for all?
In the mid-fifteenth century households held parcels ofland measured in kyol,