424 MILITA R Y RE FORMprovided with support taxpayers. The net result was that "for the last four or five
ycars there has been no way to provide for the financial expenditures of the reg-
iment. [Those supposed to be on duty] have been spending long days in idle-
ness and leisure ... and they have become soldiers that are very hard to control."
Kim saw nothing but trouble coming from an expansion of their numbers. To
slap a support tax on peasants to increase the rice ration for an expanded quota
of soldiers by a couple of mal, and to require that the men actually show up for
duty in the capital would only earn their resentment.
He was undoubtedly considering that expansion of the Royal Division from
12,000 to 21,000 soldiers meant an increase of 9,000 troops plus the creation
of 63,000 new support taxpayers.86 Even though remittances from support tax-
payers were not supposed to impose an additional burden on the taxpaying pub-
lic because they were designcd to replace ordinary tax payments, Kim Yuk still
viewed the conversion of the Royal Division's finances to a support taxpayer
system as a shocking tax increase.
Furthermorc, the additional men that would be recruited for service would
mostly be vagabonds from the hills, like "wild horses that have never been bri-
dled." If they had any skill at all, it was as bandits and robbers. There was noth-
ing but harm to be anticipated by bringing such men into the capital as guards.
Kim's suggestion was that if you had to recruit them for service at all, it would
be better to assign them to units in their homc provinces, grant them tax-exemp-
tion privileges and support taxpayers in accordance with standard regulations,
provide them with a special, prestigious title and somewhat favorable treatment,
and subject them to normal training and instruction. That way, it would not be
necessary to go through the bother of accumulating a grain reserve for their rations
or set up rotating tours of duty in the capital, and the country would still have
a reserve force of men to usc in an invasion or emergency.
He also complained about expanding military forces during a time of hard-
ship and famine. He predicted that the order to recruit morc men for the regi-
ment would create a greater demand for rations and resources than could be met
by the support and grain-remittance procedures of the support-taxpayer system,
particularly since grain and cloth had to be transported by ship from support
taxpayers in some provinces. Thc incrcase in soldiers would thus impose
demands on the Ministry of Taxation for support, contrary to Yu's theory of the
independence of the support taxpayer system from the state treasury. 87 Although
Kim Yuk's objections may well have represented the viewpoint of a conserva-
tive, tight-fisted fiscal expcrt who was not committed to King Hyojong's policy
of taking revenge on the Manchus, his criticism at least reveals that the expan-
sion of the Royal Division and the use of support taxpayers as a means of finance
was a mixed blessing at bcst.
Difficulty of Enforcing Rules: Old-Age Exemption Fees. Yu's faith that his rules
of administrative procedure would be followed to the letter seems strange when
some of the simplest rules of the military service system were not being fol-
lowed in his own time. Take, for example, the rule that all adult males were to