MILITARY SERVICE SYSTEM 553along the coast, and silver and iron mining in the interior, and (2) the capital
fund of the goverment's grain-loan system Chwanja) accuIllulated in granaries
throughout the country. If the king took over these resources, he could finance
the total abolition of the two-p 'il military support tax "as easily as turning over
his hand." Unfortunately, because there were not sufficient resources on hand
to carry out an immediate and total abolition, it was preferable to cut the tax
rate in half to one p'i!. Kwon had obviously abandoned Yu Hyongwon's two-
p 'il tax rate because the history of the period since his death in 1673 had proved
the weakness of that position.
Kwon's economic thinking had obviously progressed beyond the level ofYu
Hyongwon because he abandoned the idea that the financing for duty soldiers
had to be provided exclusively by cloth or grain taxes from the support taxpayers
(pain). Instead, he argued for the utilization of supplementary mining as well
as fishing and salt revenue and proposed substituting cash revenue for the reduc-
tion in cloth taxes. He estimated the amount that would be needed after the tax
cut to maintain the Five Military Divisions and civilian capital bureaus at 502,659
yang of cash (half the original revenue of 502,659 p'il or 1,005,318 yang of
cash). He predicted that revenue from the taxation of fish, salt, iron, and silver
would be sufficient to offset it, but without presenting a detailed statistical break-
down of revenues. He then estimated the revenue shortage in the countryside
from a one-p 'il tax cut at 60,314 p 'iI, which, converted to cash at the rate of two
yang per p'il, would be equivalent to 110,628 yang.
He claimed that his proposal to offset this deficit was based on the militia model
extolled by Yu Hyongwon, but in fact it appears to have been based on the replace-
ment of support-taxpayer taxes with another form of revenue in a form that was
far less progressive than some of his other suggestions. He wanted the state to
buy up a restricted amount of land and become the landlord for peasants who
would become tenants of the state, a tactic he referred to as a "supporting land"
system (yangjon).The leading military headquarters in a province (those of the
governor and provincial army and navy commanders) would be authorized to
buy land offered by ordinary landowners for sale on the market, lease it to ten-
ant cultivators either on a fifty/fifty sharecropping arrangeIllent or according to
fixed, lower-rate, longer term leaseholds (taji), and use the rental income for
military expenses. He asserted that this method would benefit both public and
private interests simultaneously, encourage the people to engage in primary pro-
duction, substitute for the current cloth tax exactions, provide for regular trib-
ute payments (out of income) without any reduction in revenue, and operate
according to the principles of the ancient militia system, where "agriculture is
used to support [yang I soldiers and soldiers do no harm to agriculture, what could
be called a complete policy."
Financing of the purchase of land from private owners would be provided by
the grain loan funds currently stored in granaries that were currently either rot-
ting away or being used for forced loans on people who did not even want them
at interest rates so heavy that they were tantamount to a surtax. By using these