CHAPTER 7
Land Reform: Compromises
with the Well-Field Model
"If the great root is in confusion, in all other matters there will he nothing that
is not done incbrrectly.'"
"If we could in accordance with present circumstances take into consideration
the intention of the ancients and put it into practice, we would have a method ...
and if changes were adapted to present-day circumstances, then all people would
obtain what [they require] and all plans would tum out well. Even though you
would not delineate the shape of a well-field, the essence of the well-field system
would still be contained in it."2LAND REFORM AND THE MAL DISTRIBUTION OF WEALTH
Yu Hyongwon lived in a society that had represented an intolerable departure
from classical ideals because its ruling class was dominated hy the semihered-
itary yangban and more than a third of its ruled class consisted of hereditary
slaves. He prescribed formulas for redressing these problems by proposing the
creation of a new ruling class through strict standards of education and the recruit-
ment of officials by the evaluation of individual moral bchavior, and yet he did
not desire this process to remove or eliminate the existing yangban. Hc wanted
only to force them to reform their ways while allowing some opportunity for
upward mobility for those fcw of lesser status capable of moral perfection.
He also suggested a gradual method for achieving the abolition of slaves by
the immediate prohibition of the transmission of slave status to one's heirs, the
adoption of the matrilineal rule for mixed commoner/slave marriages, and the
replacement of slaves by hired laborers. This gradual approach was designed to
buffer the economic and cultural shock that the yangban slaveowners might oth-
erwise suffer if a royal decree was issued to abolish slavery instantaneously.
In between yang ban and slaves in the Choson social status system were the
commoners, the people of good status (yang'in). The vast majority of mng'in
were peasant cultivators differentiated into a small number of landlords and a
277