574 MILITARY REFORMYu Suwan (Usa)After Yi Ik, other statecraft scholars of the eighteenth century who took up the
problems of military service incorporated the proposals and orientations of active
officials into their writings. Yu Suwon, writing in the late 173os, rejected the
idea of a land allotment scheme such as the one Yu Hyongwon called for because
it was an historical anachronism, a system that could only succeed within the
context of a feudal (ponggan) environment. He was definitely a practical state-
craft writer willing to deal with the contemporary situation, but he also criti-
cized not only the support taxpayer system and the levying of cloth taxes on
adult males but the household cloth tax as well. He did so, however, because he
felt both were regressive taxes, not because he was opposed to imposing a tax
on all status groups including yangban. He wanted to base all revenue on two
taxes only: a land tax and an "equal service rice tax" levied on households divided
into three categories based on wealth rather than family size. As a mid-eigh-
teenth century statecraft thinker, his writings not only discussed a number of
proposals in whieh military finance was treated separately from labor service
or the militia ideal, he also advocated a program of finance based on rational
criteria for equitable taxation of property, production. and wealth."
An Chongbok, Yi Kyugyong, Tasan
In like fashion, An CMngbok, in his discussion of the yangyok system, cited
the ideas ofYu Kye, Kim Yuk, Song Siyol, Song Chun'gil, Kim Sokchu, Nam
Kuman, and other active officials and their discussion of taxation (rather than
strictly service) alternatives. without, by the way, bothering to mention the views
ofYu Hyongwon on this question.7 Yi Kyugyong thought that the capitation tax
imposed on all status categories was the best method of taxation, and even argued
that it would provide the means for achieving something akin to the personal
service of the Tang, the rice capitation tax of the Chin, or the adult-male cash
tax of the Sung dynasties in China.s
And Tasan (Chong Yagyong), writing in the early nineteenth century, discussed
the history not only of alternate tax proposals but also the equal service reform
of 1750 and the rather sorry results of that reform. As he put it, how could a
reform that cut the tax rate in half end up with people in his own time paying
twice what they used to pay in taxes? Like Yi Ik, he also believed that collect-
ing a cloth tax had no classical sanction, but his views on solutions differed from
statecraft writers of earlier periods because he had become aware of collective
methods used hy villagers on their own for distributing village tax quotas more
equitably among village residents. In fact, he appears to have favored either a
capitation or household tax of some sort, but pointed out that it was only nec-
essary for the government to encourage the spontaneous formation of village
collective tax associations (kunp ogye) or the establishment of funds or lands
(yokkunjon or kUllbujij6n) in villages for the purpose of paying the village's tax