MILITARY SERVICE SYSTEM 555ual reform of the situation could be achieved, but not evidently by abolishing
the units themselves. The Military Training Agency, however, was another story.
Because its soldiers were not peasants but professional soldiers, they were a curse
on the commoner peasants (yangmin) who annually had to supply 5,000 som of
rice and 70,000 p 'if of cloth in support taxes, all of which had to be forced from
peasants who did not have the means to pay. The problem derived from the fail-
ure to base the Five Military Division system on the fundamental principle of
preventing "mutual harm between farming and military service" when its units
were first established in the seventeenth century.
This slogan, of course, referred to the presumed complementarity of agricul-
tural production and military service under the classical militia system. Kwon
said that when the Military Training Agency was first established (in 1593), there
was no time to provide a regular source of income and support for the unit, so
the government created the temporary samsuryang or "three types of soldiers
rice surtax" on land in the southern three provinces. What then happened was
that later generations respected and preserved as an honored institution what
the creators of the agency had only intended as a temporary measure. By con-
trast, his proposal to use the profits from salt and fishing and to use grain loan
funds to rent land for the support of soldiers (pyongjon) was based on the fun-
damental (and classical) proposition that no military system should do harm to
agriculture or be a burden on peasant producers.
Kwon then turned his attention to the problem of the palace estates (kung-
bang or kungga) established by kings for the support of princes and princesses.
Since the end of Sonjo's reign in the late sixteenth century, an increasing num-
ber had been given special royal grants of land in the countryside for their sup-
port, but because the fields had been laid waste by Hideyoshi's invasion, there
was not enough land to fill the quota of the land grant. In etIect, they had been
given blank warrants (kongp ae) without any real income, and in compensation
they were awarded tax revenues from fishing and salt manufacture along the
coast. Although this arrangement was only supposed to be a temporary adjust-
ment. at the present time palaee estates had a full quota of land grants and also
retained and increased their monopoly over income from the production of the
sea. "The catch of each fishing net and pole is in every case assigned [to some
palace estateJ, and the [profits] of the great deep all ends up in their nets. How
could this have been the basic intention of Sonjo's courtT
The poor fishermen on the other hand, had to bear a half-dozen taxes on eaeh
catch in addition to those owed to the palace estates: taxes owed to local mag-
istrates, to owners (of fishing weirs?) who held certificates (ib 'an) from the gov-
ernment, to bureaucratic offices of the capital, and to the provincial governor
and army and navy commanders. Kwon insisted that all these extra levies be
abolished and that peasants living along the coast only be required to pay taxes
authorized by the state.
Kwon also urged the crown prince to use what he heard were vast reserves of
rice, beans, and other grains in the capital granaries to make up any shortages in