MILITARY FINANCE 477
exempted from military service to pay one p'it of cloth (per year) between the
time of marriage and the age of sixty. He listed the current types of exempted
individuals as follows: regular court officials, ex-officeholders, saengwon and
chinsa degree-holders, Yllhak, men with office rank but no post (p'llmgwan),
those eligible to take the kwago highest civil service examination, and nothoi
sons of yangban given special permission to take the examinations. In consid-
eration of their "voluntary" payment of the one-p' if cloth levy the government
would exempt them permanently from any future attempts at military regis-
tration and assignment to guard units. On the other hand. nothoi of yangban
who were not given permission to take the examinations, extra-quota school
students (aeg'oe kyosaeng), and the male descendants of regular soldiers
(chonggun) (i.e., commoner peasants or men of good status with regular mil-
itary service obligations) would be forbidden from making cloth payments in
lieu of service.
To allay the anger of the yangban class at the prospect of a new tax and stave
off any possible uprising against the throne, the king would be obliged to instruct
them that he could not permit a situation in which one part of the people were
allowed to enjoy ease and idle luxury while the men of good status alone
(yangjong) had to bear all the burdens and hardships of military service. He
would also have to make clear that the purpose of such a reform would be not
to increase the number of men liable for service but to ensure equal distribution
of the burdens of service, not to increase the wealth of the state, but to save the
nation from military disaster, and not to invade the interests of the scholar-offi-
cial families (sajok), but in fact to allow them permanent exemption from actual
military service. Thus, Yu Kye concluded that the promise of permanent, legal
exemption from the military rosters should provide sufficient incentive for the
scions of the yangban to make a one-p 'il tax payment while those who at pre-
sent were making illicit, low-rate payments to escape higher rates would be pro-
hibited from doing so. "Then, in the name of a service-exemption, we would
be able to gain the real goal of equalizing [the burden] of military service." In
addition, it would become possible to cut the cloth tax rate for ordinary support
taxpayers by half.
On the other hand, such a radical reform could not be adopted right away
because impoverished yangban (sajok) as well as commoner peasants were cur-
rently suffering from famine, but the measure could be implemented after the
next harvest. By severing taxation from service Yu Kye was abandoning the hoary
tradition of the Tang. Not only was this an adaptation to yangban status sensi-
bilities, it also represented a progressive move toward a more flexible system
of military finance. Hyojong replied that Yu Kye's proposal was certainly out of
the ordinary and to be admired, and he turned it over to his high officials for
deliberation. '7
A few days later Hyojong held discussions with his chief ministers on the ques-
tion. Chief State Councilor Sim Chiw6n opposed the plan because imposing a
cloth tax on the sajok was unprecedented and was bound to create resentment