MILITARY SERVICE SYSTEM 557
adapted to eighteenth-century circumstances. Kwon brought one new and orig-
inal idea to the debate over reform of the military tax system: his proposal for
state-sponsored purchase and distribution of land to landless peasants, but as
tenanted plots rather than as conditioned, returnable grants. The inspiration
for this idea must have come from Yu Hyongwon's work. even though what Yu
wanted was a far more radical policy of confiscation. nationalization, and dis-
tribution along the lines of the Tang equal-field system. Yu could envisage no
other way to achieve it but to persuade a reigning king to assert his will, ignore
the counterforces of private property and private interest, and resolutely cre-
ate the Utopian order by fiat.
K won, on the other hand, produced a more practical remedy: exploitation of
the grain-loan capital fund to engage in a limited program ofland redistribution
by buying land on the open market, renting or leasing it to landless peasants,
and using rental income to finance soldiers. This was not really the paIToting of
Yu's traditional talk about a farmer/soldier militia, but the fulfillment of Yu's
injunction to adapt principles of governance gleaned from one's study of the
classics and history to contemporary circumstance. Yu meant by the slogan to
base military service on agriculture that peasants should be given land grants
by the state. in return for which they would serve on duty as a true militia. Kwon
adapted this to mean that any plan for financing the military should not result
in the accumulation of taxes on peasants but should, on the contrary, be com-
bined with some sort of program for enhancing peasant agricultural production
and income. Mutual support between agriculural and military affairs, between
farmers and soldiers was what Kwon perceived as a fundamental principle of
governance extracted from the ancient militia ideal.
Kwon's opposition to the use of a surtax on land to finance the military and
his proposal to transfer control of nonagricultural income from palace estates
to the governmcnt for this purpose were derivative from Yu's views on these
questions. Yu had objected to a surtax on land to defray military costs, but
approved the usc of specially designated "military expense land" (klmjajon). More
to the point. Yu justified the idea because military units had already been using
certain sorts of revenue from fishing weirs, salt flats, and iron smelters to finance
banquets, weapons repair, and construction. He also hoped to abolish all types
of private control over these sources of wealth. K won also shared Yu's bias against
the permanent, salaried soldiers of the Military Training Agency, but he differed
with Yu by arguing for retention of the Five Military Divisions, no doubt because
their elimination had proved so difficult, but also because he could appreciate
military and political reasons for special divisions surrounding the capital.
Perhaps of more importance than agreement on specific issues was the matter
of a shared mode or thought, in particular a rational approach to budget balanc-
ing by calculation of expenditures and an educated cstimate of potential revenue.
Although his estimates of supplementary income from fishing. salt, silver, and
iron taxcs and from rental income from leased lands fell short of the kind ofaccu-
rate ledger-balancing that Yu seemed to hold dear, the spirit was similar.