CHAPTER 14
The Military Service
System, 1682-187°
K Samyong and others who proposed the use of some other form of taxation
to finance the military besides the support taxpayers tied to duty soldiers - par-
ticularly the use of capitation, household, or land taxes - were arguing for an
abandonment of the militia ideal and adoption of a new principle of finance: the
separation of finance from service. Those who opposed these plans were not
just defenders ofthe interests of the tax-exempt yangban and tax evaders of lesser
status; they were also locked into rigid categorical thinking on the way military
service systems should work. This conservatism was not, however. only a con-
servatism of doctrine, it was also a conservative reaction to changing economic
circumstances because the development of production, market exchange, and
the use of currency together with the expansion of population and the fiscal
requirements of the state necessitated a better method of finance for the mili-
tary system. Some reformers in the hureaucracy conceived of this initially as
merely a problem of slapping a tax on the yanghan or the tax-evaders, hut this
was only a limited and partial solution. Those who had a greater perspective
realized that the best and most comprehensive way to expand the tax base was
by liberating finance from the old formula of adult male support taxpayers of
good status (yangjilllg, pain) for rotating duty soldiers, and shifting to the use
of general revenues raised in any way that seemed feasible.
CONSERVATISM OF Yu HYONGWON'S MILITARY FINANCE PLANThe way in which soldiers were to be financed may even have been more fun-
damental than the debate over extending taxes to yangban, even though that was
also of crucial importance. It enables us to see that the household cloth tax, which
was the favorite version of an independent revenue source, was opposed by some
not necessarily or only because it would have taxed the yanghan, but primarily
because it was too close to the stigmatized separation of soldiers and the peas-
ants deemed responsible for a standing army and heavy taxes.
If one regards the development of the market and a cash and exchange econ-
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