282 LAND REFORMplot, however, was less a matter of dogmatism than a conclusion derived from
a concern for the difficulties of administration associated with the assessment
and regulation of taxation and military service.
The image of the fixed square permanently embossed in the landscape pro-
vided an important symbol of stability and security in contrast to Yu's percep-
tion of the utter chaos of private land relations in which the host of private
transactions between individuals proved impossible to control. The freedom asso-
ciated with a private market in land opened opportunities for the greedy,
wealthy, and powerful to obtain large holdings and create severe divisions
between the rich and the poor, landlords and tenants, and large owners and small
cultivators. Yu and his Chinese authorities also admired the image of the fixed
plot because it connoted a simplicity and ease of administration that was nec-
essary to prevent administrative manipulation and corruption and the subver-
sion of state control by private interests.The IOo-myo PlotYu was so obsessively attached to the specific dimensions of the individual plot,
the unit area of 100 myo equivalent to one kyong, that he was charged with the
sin of archaic literalism or dogmatism, but he defended himself by arguing that
his preference for these dimensions was the product of his own independent study
of its feasibility.
The reason why I now choose IOO myo is not because I want to copy the
ancients. I calculated the labor power of the people and I estimated productivity.
I compared it with the fertility of the land and the population and also compared
the old with the new r situation] .... Only after making my calculations did T
realize that the method used by the ancient sages [was good for] ten thousand
generations and could not be changed.lsIn his survey of Chinese dynastic history through the Tang, he carefully
recorded total population and acreage statistics to calculate average per capita
holdings as a basis for judging the optimum size of a familial land grant.
He might also have chosen the 70 myo unit ifhe had so desired because Men-
cius referred to this size as the standard during the Shang (Yin) dynasty, and it
was also the standard area supposedly utilized by the sage Kija in the Pyongyang
area of northern Korea after he arrived from China with the title of marquis of
Chason, a titIe granted by Wu-wang of the early Chou. Yu's attention was brought
to this system by Han Paekkyom's (1550-1613) essay, Kiji5n tosol (The Land
System of Kija, H'ith Illustrations and Explanations). Han had personally vis-
ited the Pyongyang area to investigate the putative archaeological remains of
Kija's model of a square divided into four equal parts of 70 myo each in area.
Even though this grid was different from the well-field pattern, it was also by