550 MILITARY REFORMtaxable male population. Its short tenn effects were negligible. but it might have
contributed to the more noticeable decline in the slave population around 1800.
Rate and Troop Reduction, [732-34
When debate over military tax refonn was resumed in 1733, Pak Munsu took
the lead in defending status-based exemption from military taxes, and King
Yongjo agreed with him, probably because after the imsin rebeIlion of 1728 by
the Disciple's Faction and local yangban, he was not likely to approve any solu-
tion that involved an additional tax on yangban. He was willing, however, to
consider Kim Sangsong's idea of using land tax revenue to offset the costs of
rate reduction, and he suggested himself that taxes on newly reclaimed land might
be used for this purpose, but after a protracted debate in 1734, he decided to
take no action.19 In 1732 he did scale back troop quotas for the civil bureaus in
the capital and the Five Military Divisions to 1699 levels, and made an attempt
to eliminate unessential service in J734, but the results of these efforts were
negligible.^20
In 1742 King Yongjo established another Commoner Service Investigation
Bureau (Yangyok sajongch'ong) and sent commissioners out to the provinces to
accumulate infonnation on the operations of the military support tax system.
Publication of all statistics was finished in 1748.^21 The figures indicated that the
legislation of the previous fifty years had hardly affected the advertised flaws
and evils in the system.^12 The only immediate effect of the survey was a minor
reduction of troop quotas.
THE EQUAL-SERVICE REFORM, 1750-52
Opposition to Major OverhaulA hundred years of controversy culminated in the equal service system
(kyuny6kp6p) established first in 1750 and modified in 1752. Furthermore, for
the first time in the history of the debate the ideas of Yu Hyongwon were rec-
ommended to the throne by State Councilor Kwon Chok. Despite the apparent
openness of the debate. however, the denouement might have been predicted by
anyone familiar with the history of decisions made since 1682, when thc oppor-
tunity for adopting the household cloth tax was passed by. Thereafter, radical
proposals were eschewed in favor of more practical measures like registration
and investigation campaigns, quota reduction, and rate uniformity at two p'il
per support taxpaycr.
When the debate began, however, it appeared that Yongjo had convinced him-
self that the time had come to adopt the household cloth tax, and his minister
of taxation, Pak Munsu, who had opposed it in 1733, also came around and sup-
ported it as well, with the proviso that a cash tax be imposed instead of a cloth
tax. Since not every official at court opposed the idea of a household tax, the