486 MILITARY REFORM
As for the provincial soldiers (of good or commoner status), Yi recommended
granting them land tax exemptions (kuppok) and providing support taxpayers
to ensure funds for emergencies and continuous training - his way of provid-
ing equivalent consideration to those of lower status than the sons of the yang-
ban. Accumulation of grain reserves could be left to the voluntary action of the
rich in the countryside, who would be encouraged to establish their own village
granaries (sach 'ang). This was the essence of his program for a restoration
(chunghung) of the dynasty's fortunes.
Yi also referred to Song Hon of the fifteenth century, who had recommended
the establishment of a General Directorate To Eliminate Evils (Hyokp'ye-dogam)
to revive laws of the dynastic founders that had either fallen out of use or had
become corrupted over time, carry out a population census and a survey of total
production, and use these as a base for creating an "equal" or fair tax system.
Yi argued that a grand directorate was not essential; a Reform Bureau
(Hy6kp'yech'ong) attached to the Border Defense Command staffed by con-
current officials would be sufficient. But it should set about finding real adult
males to put in the military registers in place of all the children and dead souls
listed there, reduce the size and weight of the cloth bolts rcquired for tax pay-
ments, reduce the number of soldiers in the capital guards, provide support for
provincial soldiers, put the national accounts on a pay-as-you-go basis (yang'ip
wich 'ul, i.e., adjusting expenditures to revenue), and stimulate savings by both
the state and private parties to build a reserve defense fund. Despite the frus-
trating record of reform in the past, Yi believed this could be done if the gov-
ernment just made a beginning. "If today we take care of one of these matters,
and tomorrow issue another order, then in one or two years the state will come
close to achieving it."27
Yi Samyong: Household Cloth Tax on all StatusesLater in the year, however, Second Minister of War Yi Samyong made the most
vigorous case to date for adoption of a household cloth system, but he did it on
the basis of a mathematical calculation of income and expenditure in associa-
tion with certain dogmatic and traditional views about the nature of a household
tax system. To countcr earlier criticism that a household tax would produce insuf-
ficient revenue to replace the taxes collected from existing support taxpayers, he
cited tax and census statistics. He estimated total expcnses for the capital and
provinces at about two to three hundred thousandp 'il per year (which compared
to statistics of a later period seems to be only halfof what they should have been),
and total population as recorded in the census of 1678 (muo year) at approxi-
mately 1.2 million households (6 million people if one assumes an average of 5
persons/household, only half the population estimate of Tony Michell). Exclud-
ing 420,000 or so households of official and private slaves, the unfit and sick,
beggars and others who could not be expected to pay a military cloth support
tax, hc estimated a total of 720,000 potential taxpaying households.2H He took