254 SOCIAL REFORM
into an illicit takeover of public land (kongjon) as well as the land of ordinary
peasants by the scholar-officials and the great and powerful. Even though the
state in late Koryo sought to eliminate or reduce large estates by confiscating
their land and granting prebends in Kyonggi Province to the scholar-officials
under the kwajon system, it also permitted the scholar-official class to keep their
hereditary slaves "as their private property" because they were their sole means
of livelihood and support.
He concluded that the Choson government was worse than Koryo in its respect
for and exaltation of the hereditary aristocratic families (munbol), who refused
to work as artisans or merchants or till the soil as peasants even if the only alter-
native was starvation, because such work stamped one as a commoner and
involved loss of face and status. They were even more dependent on their hered-
itary slaves for service and economic support than their counterparts in the Koryo
period. The state thus put these private slaves of the aristocrats outside the realm
of its jurisdiction and left them completely untouched. As yangban became even
more impoverished, it was even less likely that the government would levy per-
sonal service (sinyOk) on private slaves. 176
Yu Suwon regarded this as a perverse system. Like other opponents of slav-
ery, he often asserted the equality of all subjects of the king and the basic human-
ity of the slave. For example, he remarked that, "Even though slaves are base,
they are still human beings [illyu], so how could you permit them to be returned
to slavery once they have been permitted to purchase [good status, i.e., free-
dom]?"I77 Or,
Even though slaves have masters, they are in fact all the people of the state,
but the state regards them as people beyond the pale [i.e., incapable of moral
instruction and civilization], and [for that reason the state] has never required
any labor service of them or levied a single coin [of tax on them], leaving their
masters to do with them what they will, never daring to lay a hand on them. This
is the reason why the evil [burden) of commoner labor service [is so bad) ....
The state regards all its people as the same and loves them all equally. How
could there be a principle according to which the state would not levy [taxes or
service] on private slaves but only do so on people of good status (yangmin)?17^8For the 1720S his statement about the exemption of private slaves from tax-
ation was obviously untrue because slaves had already become a major com-
ponent of the sogo troop units and the abyong military aides to high provincial
officials. His statements about equality, however, did not mean that he wanted
all slaves be freed. They were in fact to be taxed, and at a rate different from
commoners as well. In the case of public or official slaves, he urged the adop-
tion of a uniform cash levy on both, and a reduction of the personal tribute levy
on official slaves. In answering the charge that this would reduce state revenues
unacceptably, he argued that there were so many official slaves that if those cur-
rently unregistered were all accurately recorded, rate reduction would not