OFFICIAL SALARIES AND EXPENSES 843land and population of magistracies. they had to be on daily duty for a host of
responsibilities. unlike the clerks and runners of the capital who were only
assigned specialized tasks and had much free time. Two shifts were required
because they had to provide service for entertaining guests and military affairs
in addition to their ordinary duties.^62
The classics had declared that clerks and runners were commoners who served
in office and were entitled to salaries in the range of 25-35 mal (per month?),
equivalent to the average income or production of a peasant. Yu estimated that
average annual production from a superior farmer working 100 myo (I kyling)
of land - the minimal land grant to a peasant family under his program of redis-
tribution - was from 130 to 140 kok(1 ,300-1 0400 mal or mal) of un hulled grain,
and 60-70 kok (600-700 mal) per kyang for an average farmer.^63 The monthly
equivalent of those figures was from 50-1 I7 mal per month per family. Yu
asserted that since the farmer would be assisted by his wife and sons and a few
more adult men for occasional assistance, he was justified in estimating the
monthly income of a single adult male at 25-35 mal. He also felt that his pro-
posed salary for clerks and runners would in fact be more generous than a peas-
ant's income because they would not have to pay the land tax, military support
tax, and the costs of an ox and seed.^64
How realistic was Yu's estimate of peasant production as the basis for deter-
mining the minimum salary for a clerk or runner? To begin with, he did not
attempt to calculate the annual production of an average peasant under con-
temporary conditions of ownership and tenancy. Kim Yongsop has shown that
in the districts he studied in the late Chason period very few owners or tenants
owned or cultivated more than 1 kyal of land, and most possessed between .35
to .68 kyo!. If this were grade 4 land, they would have possessed between 1.6
to 3.2 acres. Since current productivity averaged approximately 6,48 sam or 97.2
mal per acre, such peasants would have produced between 156 mal and 31 r mal
per year, or 13 to 26 mal per month.
Yu's estimation of roo myo or 16.7 acres would have meant a vast improve-
ment over per capita land occupation and peasant income at the time. Since the
peasants would have possessed or cultivated five to ten times more land than
they did, his esti mate of production by a single peasant family on 16.7 acres of
600 to 10400 mal per year was four to five times greater than the 156 or 3 r r mal
that might be estimated from an average peasant holding at the time, or eight to
ten times greater than the income of tenants who had to share half (or more) of
their crop with the landlord.b5
Yu's exaggerated estimate of peasant productivity as the basis for granting
minimal salaries to clerks and runners show that he did not intend that the plan
could be carried out under present circumstances. The whole plan for full com-
pensation must have been part ofYu's attempt to justify a full cadastral survey
against the opponents of the taedong reform who had resisted a resurvey of cul-
tivated land. Yu realized that if a national cadastral survey were carried out justly
and honestly in conjunction with his program for nationalization and distribu-