PART IV CONCLUSION 571
exemption from tax payments. Yu's solution to this problem was to advocate the
recreation of early Chason institutions, which would require the return of yang-
ban not just to taxation but to real military service, albeit in prestigious guard
units. The difference between Yu and the active officials who sought reform,
however, was that Yu believed it was possible to turn the clock back to the early
fifteenth century. The others hardly raised the issue because they realized that
by the early seventeenth century members of prestigious families had come to
believe so firmly that their high status entailed exemption from military service,
and that service itself demeaned one's personal and family dignity so much that
service for them was out of the question. In this sense, Yu's approach was at
once more radical, more idealistic, and more anachronistic.
Officials like Kim Yuk, Yu Kye, Yi Konmyong, Yi Imyong, Pak Munsu, and
others who proposed ideas like a fine on school dropouts, a tax on idle and leisured
men, or a capitation or household lax levied on the yang han elite as well as the
lowcr orders of society shared a different orientation toward reform than Yu
Hyongwon. They no longer believed universal service was necessary for a fair
tax system, and they were willing to separate the question of finance from ser-
vice ~ cven though most were not willing to challenge accepted dogma by call-
ing for a completely professional national army. They were thus far more practical
than Yu because they were willing to accept reality, and they could be deemed
more progressive by recognizing that the increase in commerce and the use of
money had rendered the system of personal scrvice obsolete. And those who
wanted to tax thc yangban rather than press them into service were hardly less
radical than Yu in their desire for a fair and equitable distribution of taxes.
Yu showed only a limited capacity to adapt to the changes underway in thc
seventeenth century. He saw the wisdom of Kim Yuk's taedong reform and the
convcrsion of tribute in kind to a surtax on land, but he could not conceive of
anything but support taxpayers and rotating duty soldiers as the proper mode of
financing the military. Although he did approve the use of production from land
for military finance, it was only within the context of an institution sanctioned
in historical lore ~ military colony land (tun jon ). He could not, therefore. approve
a land surtax for that purpose. Even though he did not comment on the house-
hold or capitation taxes, his disciple K won Chok did oppose the household tax
in ] 750, advocating instead a new plan for state purchase of land to be rented
to landless peasants and the rental income used for military finance. This was
justified in his mind because of the vague conncction in classical principle
between some kind of land grant and reciprocal military servicc.
EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY SCHOLARS ON MILITARY REFORMA comparison ofYu's ideas with those of some scholars who supposedly inher-
ited the tradition of Practical Learning from Yu demonstrates that they tended to
inherit thcir classical orientation from him but their practical proposals from the
debates among active officials waged over the previous ccntury. The problem is