PART III CONCLUSION 385intellectual disciples like Yi lk did not necessarily subscribe to all elements of
his plan.
THE CHALLENGE TO PRIVATE PROPERTY
Yi Ik thought that Yu's plan to induce a courageous king to confiscate all pri-
vate property to redistribute land on a rotating basis to the peasantry had no chance
of success in contemporary Korea, and almost all other scholars and statesmen
of that time shared that view. Tasan was one exception. In his first yojon plan
he did propose a far more radical scheme of distribution, for in his proposition
rewards were based on the amount of work contributed to production, as well
as the ruthless elimination of the class of scholars for the special forms of remu-
neration such as those contrived by Yu Hyongwon.
Nonetheless, Tasan was forced by the pressures of real life either the prospect
of his imminent execution during the repression of Catholics in 1801 or the obser-
vations he made during the years of exile - to modify his views and work out a
solution that accepted the reality of private property. Thc futility of top-down
radical reform instituted and led by the king was better illustrated by King
Chongjo \ failure to formulate any kind of substantial land reform program
despite an extensive search for advice in the 1 790s.
The curious aspect of this history of debate over land reform was that the clas-
sical model of public ownership and relatively fair (if not totally equal) distri-
bution of land was accorded public rcspect by almost everyone, no matter what
their private interests were. Since privatc property was never extolled as the proper
ideal for the distribution of land because it was always stigmatized by its asso-
ciation with private interest and greed, public ownership and egalitarian distri-
bution schemes were ncver denounced as either herctical or subversive.
Nonetheless, all serious statecraft writers, including Yu Hyongwon himself, were
aware that any attcmpt at confiscation would lead not only to resistance by land-
lords, but to possible rcbcllion by them against thc king and statc. Since few
officials were willing to advocate that dangerous path, especially since so many
of them were landlords themselves, no king and precious few scholars were will-
ing to challenge the landlords on their own.
The result was a curious anomaly: the dominant principle of land tenure in
reality - private ownership - was never, and could never be, articulated either
as a legitimate legal or moral principle by anyone in Korean society. Certainly
there were very few who, like Wang An-shih, had the courage to openly cxtol
the positive contributions to the agrarian economy of the landowners. Never-
theless, the debate over land reform after Yu's death focused on the question of
whethcr one should challenge the private landowners and landlords or acqui-
esce to their interests.
This chapter has traced the history of the debate ovcr land reform in the eigh-
teenth and nineteenth centuries in a brief and possibly too cursory manner, but
this abbreviated treatment was sufficient to show that in both thought and action,