DISINTEGRATION OF THE EARLY CHOSON 65prebendal rights to waste or unreclaimed land to petitioners for prebends, which
meant that they had to undergo the costs involved in reclamation. On the other
hand, those who did reclaim wasteland as part of their prebendal grant also felt
that they were also owners of the land as well as recipients of the cho tax since
they had to invest their own funds in its development. I>
In 1443 King Sejong introduced his kongbOp system to increase the state's
tax revenues and to ensure a more equitable and uniform method of taxation
throughout the country for the benefit of the smallholding peasants. The com-
plex set of gradations based on land fertility and climatic variations led to an
increase in the assessments of the most fertile land and almost doubled the total
tax revenue collected, but now that the kwajon prebends had been returned to
Kyonggi Province, where the land was poorer than the south and the tax levels
lower, those who held them there were protected against the tax increases. Prior
to 1443 the land of the country had been divided into three grades of fertility,
from a high of 20 mal/kyol to a low of 4 mal/kyol for the poorest land, but by
the land survey of 1634 hardly any land was registered as fertile and almost all
of it was taxed at the lowest rate of 4 mal/kyol, a system that had benefited the
owners of the most fertile paddy lands in the southern coastal regionsJ
Replacement of Kwajon with Chikchon PrebendsAfter King Sejo usurped the throne in 1455 he had to distribute more prebends
to merit subjects and officials who had supported him politically but, faced with
revenue problems, he decided in 1466 to abolish kwajon prebendal grants alto-
gether. Under his new "office land" (chikchon) system, prebends were granted
only to officeholders. He carried out another national survey to find the total
amount of inherited prebends, reduced the average prebendal allotments for most
ranks, and in 1470 turned over all tax collection responsibilities to the district
magistrates, who then doled out grain allotments to incumbent officials.s
Certain important officials at Sejo's court took up the cause of the hereditary
yangban. Yang Songji complained that Sejo's measures had violated the ancient
principle of maintaining a class of men on "hereditary salaries" (serok) and
"hereditary officials" (sesin), for without the income from prebends, the dis-
tinction between them and the common peasants was lost, and their widows and
dependent heirs were thrown into destitution. Yi Kiikki and Ku Ch'igon also
argued that hereditary prebends were necessary to encourage moral behavior,
to serve as an incentive for improving moral standards of behavior, and to incul-
cate respect for rites and righteousness.
On the other hand, a number of important officials like Chong Inji, Ch'oe Hang,
Sin Sukchu, and Han Myonghoe in the 1470S opposed the restoration of her ed-
itary prebends. For that matter, the high officials of the late fifteenth century
who possessed their own lands and estates were not that concerned about the
loss of prebends, while the heirs of earlier officials who had not established suc-
cessful careers were discomfited by the loss of prebendal grantsY Although the