LAND REFORM: COMPROMISES 297Men who were not in the ranks of the soldiers still dared to receive soldier's land
[kunjon). Fathers concealed their holdings and privately gave them to their sons.
Sons hid and stole the land and did not return it to the government. Once the law
of the founding fathers was destroyed, then the gates for the accumulation of
large holdings [kyomhy6ng] were opened .... The land which our founding
fathers so justly divided up and granted has become the private property of indi-
vidual families or persons.^72According to Cho Chun the reciprocal feature of the equal-field system of the
early Koryo was lost by the conversion of public land to private ownership. Reg-
ular officials and soldiers in the state armies were both entitled to land grants
under this system because of the service they performed, but not after the con-
version of land grants to private ownership.
There are some persons who never once leave their homes to serve as officials at
court, never once put their foot forward to serve in the army, yet they wear fancy
clothes and eat fine food, and they sit around and enjoy the benefits [that accrue
to officials and regular soldiers]. On the contrary, the officials who serve on duty
guarding [the king] day and night and the soldiers who fight hard in a hundred
battles do not get even one myo's worth of land to cultivate to provide for their
fathers, mothers, wives, and sons. How can they be encouraged to be loyal and
righteous and meet their responsibilities for earning merit in what
they do~73Private ownership of land was also a cause for the loss of public spirit and a
stimulus to avarice and unseemly competition. The time of the officials was taken
up in investigating and adjudicating claims and counterclaims over title to land
as the whole population competed to increase its holdings.
"If sons do not get what they want in seeking one myo's worth of land from
their fathers and mothers, this on the contrary gives rise to feelings of resent-
ment. It is even worse when brothers are involved. This is because the existence
of private land [sa jon] has caused people to fall from moral behavior to the behav-
ior of animals."74
Cho Chun's disdain for private property was echoed by the censor, Yi Haeng,
who was also a leading advocate for land reform in the I 380s. Yi Haeng summed
up the critique oflandownership in one pithy paragraph: "It is due to the evil of
private land [sajon] that the wealthy and powerful families accumulate large
landed property, that the state has nothing for its expenses, that tax burdens have
doubled, that the people are fallen and distressed, that the strong devour the weak,
that disputes and lawsuits are prolific and numerous, that flesh and blood sus-
pect one another, and that customs and mores have been destroyed."75
Yi also echoed a point that had been made in the Chinese literature on land
reform about the bad effects on the ntling class of the destntction of the well-