LATE CHOSON PROPOSALS 383
cratic hierarchy, the king. The concept of popular sovereignty, or the legitimate
political role of the uneducated peasant masses, simply did not exist at the time.
What took place after 180 I, therefore, was the continuation, not development,
of the supreme ideal of the well-field collective model, but an unmistakable retreat
in the face of landlord power on the part of kings as well as reformers. Forced
to accept this reality, Tasan and So Yugu sought to work out schemes to create
the possibility of establishing collective organization without challenging the
landlords directly, a scheme that would succeed by lulling them into passivity
or overwhelming them by the superior efficiency and productivity of their pro-
poscd systems.
I doubt that these tactics were any more realistic than Yu Hyongwon's if only
because they were ignored until the Imsul rebellion of 1862 shocked the gov-
ernment into serious consideration of the economic causes of the rebellion. And
the response to the crisis of 1862 did not indicate that the government was will-
ing to challenge private propeI1y by instituting state ownership of land, redis-
tribution, and collective agriculture.