MILITARY SERVICE SYSTEM 559
wan). To salve their feelings, he proposed calling them cloth taxpaying military
officers (sup '0 kun' gfmn) instead of ordinary soldiers or support taxpayers.>8
A few days later Yongjo told his officials that even though he had been told
that a one-p 'il tax cut would be a great blessing, he would always have regrets
if he were not able to abolish the military support taxes completely. Chief State
Councilor Cho Hyonmyong, however, then told him that even if he ordered the
abolition of the two-p 'il support tax, it would be impossible to abolish the rotat-
ing duty soldiers of the Royal Division and Forbidden Guard Division. Since
the cost of their equipment was so great, if the king chose to abolish the two-
p 'il rate, he would soon run out of funds and be forced to reinstate at least a one-
p 'il tax on support taxpayers to provide for their expenses. Rather than do that,
it would be better simply to cut the current rate to one p 'il. Yongjo then remarked
that Cho's words had put him at ease, indicating that his resolve to abolish cloth
taxes on support taxpayers was not that strong to begin with. Probably he had
reached a turning point in his own mind, setting the stage for his final decision.
The Sillok historian who recorded these events in the next generation, how-
ever, was incensed by Cho's remarks and inserted his own opinion into the text
that Cho was only deceiving Yongjo (into ahandoning total elimination of the
two-p 'il tax):
[Every time any proposal was raised,] not to mention the household and land
[cloth tax propositions], they always wanted to use revenues from salt and fish-
ing to replace revenues from the support cloth taxes, so why was it only the
rotating duty soldiers for whom substitute taxes eould not be found, and why
was it necessary to have a personal cloth support tax only for them') He only
wanted to make his words sound good and put the king's mind at ease in order
to achieve his own desires.The historian was making an excellent point: why did Cho Hyonmyong think
that the only legitimate source of funds for rotating duty soldiers was adult male
support taxpayers of good status'? Why could he not see that soldiers could log-
ically be supported by revenues collected from any source? The historian's angcr
at Cho may not have been justified. Although it was possible that Cho was merely
using any argument available to block a new tax on yangban, he was obviously
limited by the same categorical thinking shared by Yu Hy6ngwon and his intel-
lectual disciple, Kwon Chok. This was the reluctance to sever any time-honored
relationship between a particular mode of tax and its objective, or between the
peasant rotating duty soldier and the peasant support taxpayer characteristic of
the mode of labor dues.^29
The gist of the debate held at court in the seventh lunar month, however, did
not focus on the propriety of abandoning reliance on support-taxpayer finance,
but on whether the funds generated from a household cash tax imposed on all
families irrespective of status offset the loss resulting from reduction or aboli-
tion of the military support tax. To do this, the rate would have to be set so high