Confucian Statecraft and Korean Institutions. Yu Hyongwon and the Late Choson Dynasty - James B. Palais

320 LAND REFORM

As if this were not clear enough, he expanded on the theme in a footnote:

In the final analysis you must have a scholar-official [class] [/aebusaJ, and that is

all there is to it. Those who are noble [kwija] can not suddenly become men who

grow crops. If those who do not engage in cultivation find it difficult to feed

themselves, this is bad. If the officials [taebu] have salaries and you allow the

scholars lsal to seek emoluments by advancing in competition, and the corrupt

clerks devote themselves to seeking bribes, then not only will you produce a

situation like what exists at present, but the way of [knowing] shame [i.e., hav-

ing a proper sense of ethics] will be lost and fraud and thievery will become

customary.23

This is an important passage that requires some explication. By hereditary
officials (sesill), Yu did not mean that access to official posts in the state bureau-
cracy should be locked up by a hereditary aristocracy. Yu was talking about a
class of morally superior men who had to be freed from the demeaning aspects
of grubbing for a living by manual labor in the fields as peasants. by engaging
in bribery and extortion as clerks, by competing in the examination system with
other scholars for degrees and posts, or presumably by vying for profits in the
marketplace. As he made clear in his discussion of education and recruitment,
he was prepared to allow men of the scholar-official class who failed to main-
tain standards of virtue and scholarship to be flushed out of the ruling class (albeit
with some leeway for them to reform their ways), but until they demonstrated
their incapacity, they were entitled to support by the state, which could only be
ensured by a system of public ownership and distribution.

Guaranteed Peasant Subsistence

To be sure, Yu was also concerned with the livelihood of the peasantry, which
had been undermined by private property.

Moreover ... once you fail to set limits to the land, then you can not in the end

equalize poverty and wealth. Also, if you do not distribute [taxes and military

service 1 on the basis of land, then those who escape labor [and military 1 service

will increase in numbers and become vagrants. In general, if you do not restore

a system of public ownership of land [kongjiin], then in making laws for all mat-

ters, not one of them will be done right. 2-1

His goal was stability of income for the producing peasant, not necessarily
absolute equality of income. An approximation of equality would be suflicient.
For example. his adversary remarked that equality of income could not be
achieved under Yu's proposed land grant system because some land was rice
paddy land and some ury bean fields and the rates of prouuctivity varied between
them. Yu replied that this was not a matter for concern because even after the