LAND REFORM: COMPROMISES 285knights or military service were not a reciprocal obligation attached to it.2s In
short, the ch 'aeji was simply designed to support the taebu as a class on the
grounds that the ruling class or the superior men in society could not be allowed
to till the fields like the common "men of the fields."
Yu argued that in "the later age" (huse) (i.e., the post-Chou period of cen-
tralized bureaucracy) there was no constancy in the appointment or dismissal
of officials and no equivalent to the Chou system of economic support for the
sadaebu. He warned that simply restoring well fields without providing for the
support of the taebu or sadaebu would be inappropriate because any of them
who might be dismissed from office "would not have the means for gaining a
living." The only way to have a complete restitution of the well-field system
would be to restore the granting of fiefs (ponggl5n).
Since Yu did not expect that ponggl5n feudalism in general or the ch 'aeji (i.e.,
wel1-field system) in particular could literal1y be restored in his own time, he
intended only that the spirit of the system should be preserved by the adapta-
tion of the idea that a taebu ruling class somehow transcends the narrow func-
tional definition of incumbent officeholding (and for that matter the simple
reciprocal or contractual definition of a class that performs service in return for
fiefs) and is entitled to guarantees by the state of a standard of living superior
to the commoner peasant. The justification for this was both moral and ascrip-
tive: the taebu were presumed to be kunja or moral1y superior men (Mencius),
and a ruling class deserved superior status and privileges. As we will see later,
however, Yu's concept of privilege by ascription or status was limited by an
equally powerful commitment to standards of performance, merit, and function,
so that he felt constrained to work out a compromise between the two ideals.
The terms taebu and sadaebu were also used in post-Chou bureaucratic times
in China to distiguish civil bureaucrats from soldiers in the Han, aristocrats from
commoners in the Northern and Southern dynasties, and degree-holders and
scholars from petty officials, farmers, merchants, and artisans in the Sung and
after. The term sadaebu was used in the Choson period not only to mean scholar-
officials in general, but the semihereditary yangban as well, but Yu also used
sadaebu for his own idealized moral elite, and on occasion yang ban as a pejo-
rative label for the contemporary Korean ruling class. The model for Yu's rul-
ing class was thus the sadaebu ofthe Chou, who were al10wed to avoid the ardors
of agriculture or commerce and enjoyed the support of the peasants who con-
tributed labor on the "lord's plot" in their fiefs (ch 'aeji or ch 'aeup). When the
Chou political and social system was destroyed in the Ch' in unification, the elim-
ination of the ch 'aeup and well-fields left the taebu as a class without proper
economic support. They were forced to rely on their salaries as state functionaries,
a comparatively risky and insecure situation.^26
To summarize our discussion thus far, Yu Hyongwon identified certain essen-
tial principles and features of the well-field or ancient system of land distribu-
tion that could be adapted to a centralized-bureaucratic situation. These included
the laying out of fixed land boundaries to create unit plots of standard dimen-