PART III
Land Reform
INTRODUCTIONLiving in the aftermath of the Japanese and Manchu invasions of [592-98, 1627,
and 1637, Yu Hyongwon was well aware of the suffering that was caused not
only by the loss of life and the destruction of property and cultivated land by
the ravages of war, but also the skewed distribution of privately owned arable
land in an economy that was still overwhelmingly agrarian, despite the begin-
nings of a development toward a more active market The trend toward greater
concentration in landholdings by a few was fueled by the loss of land by mar-
ginal peasants from bankruptcy and the commending of land by destitute peas-
ants. The latter became private slaves of large landlords in return for protection
from state taxation and labor service, a trend that was already prominent by the
mid-sixteenth century. Therefore, the task of any reformer included both the
expansion of cultivated land and agricultural production and the restoration of
a base of economic support for the peasant population, whether commoners or
slaves.
Land and agricultural production was not only the major source of wealth in
Korean society, it was also becoming an important source of taxation as the early
Choson taxation system based on the tripartite division hetween the land tax,
local product tribute in kind, and labor service was shifting by the seventeenth-
century conversion of tribute taxes in kind to a surtax on land (the taedong law).
Latcr, labor and military service was replaced by cloth tax payments in lieu of
those services by support taxpayers (]Join) and by revenues from the taedong
rice surtax. Even the tax rate on land had increased because of these reforms.
The nominal tax rate was still within the range of acceptability, but the burden
on taxpaying landowners, and by extension their commoner and slave tenants,
was increased by the fees, gratuities, and bribes exacted by the plethora of
unsalaried yamen runners, and clerks in the district yamen or granaries and cap-
ital financial ministries.
One means of lightening the land tax and the tax hurden on the landowners
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