POST-IMJIN DEVELOPMENTS 109because qualitative infonnation about the introduction of more productive tech-
niques has to be verified by quantitative data about the average size of crops
(see chap. 9 for more discussion). Furthermore, even if a simple increase in pro-
duction could be proven, that sum would have to be divided by the total popu-
lation to yield an estimate of per capita national product to detennine whether
a surplus over consumption was being created.
The transplanting of rice from seed beds instead of direct seeding began to
be practiced in parts of Kyongsang and South Kangwon provinces in the early
fifteenth century, and did not spread to Cholla and Ch'ungch'ong provinces in
the south until the end of the sixteenth century. The method had been banned
by King T'aejong in 14 I 4 because drought caused whole crops to be lost instead
of partial losses when direct seeding was used. For the next three centuries the
government continued to insist on the ban, and most officials felt that the peas-
ants preferred transplantation only because it reduced their overall workload over
direct broadcast seeding.^38 Nonetheless, transplantation began to spread quickly
around the country just after the Imjin War despite the ban and seems to have
reached all areas including the north at the turn of the eighteenth century, with
an estimated 70 to 80 percent of rice land cultivated that way. Even the central
government recognized its existence by reducing taxes for damages to trans-
planted crops from drought.
The main reasons for the adoption of transplanting by the cultivators was that
it saved half the amount of labor in weeding and transplanting, especially when
labor was used collectively, contributed to the strength of the plant by adding
the nutrients of two fields rather than one, allowed bad plants to be discarded
and roots to be washed during transplantation, and increased the size of the crop
considerably over the direct seeding method. Even though peasants ran the risk
of losing entire crops from drought, especially if the absence of rain delayed the
crucial transplantation in the fourth and fifth lunar months (and some of the
droughts in the late Choson dynasty were disastrous), both large landowners
and smallholders were zealous in adopting transplantation to increase their yields.
Kim Yongsop has argued that the rich, enterprising landowners, what he has
called "managerial rich peasants" (kyongyonghyong punong), took the lead in
pushing for the diffusion of the method because they cultivated the land them-
selves. The large landlords who turned the land over to tenants and simply col-
lected rent did not. The acceptance of transplantation became so overwhelming
that even the government was forced to modify its policy around 1698, when
King Sukchong decided to drop the ban against transplantation in fields with a
sufficient water supply.39
Several commentators throughout the dynasty said that transplanting saved
half the work and doubled the crop, but the scholar Yi Ik, in the early eighteenth
century, noted that usually the product/seed ratio of the rice crop on poor land
was^10 /, (ten mal of crop for one mal of seed planted on one turak), but reput-
edly as much as^60 /, on the most fertile land, although he had his doubts about