298 LAND REFORMfield system of the Chou - that the loss or absence of a system of state land
grants to the sajak or families of scholars made them totally dependent on salaries
received for incumbent service as officials, and hence removed a secure and
stable basis of livelihood. On the contrary, "If the scholars [sa] who have no
jobs are given land, they will be enabled to cultivate it, and if those with posts
are given salaries in place of [the income they would earn] from cultivation, their
means of living can be continued. "7^6
Almost every point made by Cho Chun and Yi Haeng in their description of
the early Koryo land system has been rejected by contemporary twentieth-cen-
tury scholars. It is no longer believed that land in early Koryo was owned by the
state and distributed to peasants in the mode of the T'ang equal-field system, or
that all commoner peasants served in the army under a militia system of rotat-
ing tours of duty. On the contrary, the early Koryo ch6nsikwa system is now
seen as a system of fictional grants of land, that is, prebends, to a broad variety
of individuals, some of whom possessed only title or rank, and others who were
officeholders or functionaries of the state, including soldiers. Grantees were
allowed to transfer or bequeath their grants to close relatives as long as the heirs
qualified under the regulations of the state. Not all peasants received land grants,
and even those that did may have only received a fictional grant for military ser-
vice, confirming private land they already owned or possessed. Similarly, the
land grants or prebends to high officials may have only been a fictional device
limiting or legitimizing private estates already held.7^7 Yu Hyongwon, however,
took as literal truth the statements of the compilers of the Kary6sa and the late
Koryo land reformers about the existence of state ownership and equitable dis-
tribution in early Koryo.
Yu Hyongwon's study of the equal-field system as it functioned in China and
Korea was perceived in terms of a uniform pattern and logic. Although he showed
some sympathy for Cho Chun's view that the early Koryo system was close to
perfection, in the end he perceived both the T'ang and Koryo equal-field sys-
tems as initially flawed and containing the seeds of their own destruction. As
he put it in the introduction to his own plan for land reform:
The equal-field system of the T'ang period also came,close to the intention of
the ancients. The Koryo dynasty used it in order to produce wealth and strength,
but the system did not make land the chief [subject]. It took people as the basis
[for distribution and taxation] and therefore registered able-bodied males and
granted them land in grades of many categories. When land was granted, there
was always the problem of too many people and too little land, or vice versa.
After the land was granted there was also the problem of having an initial sur-
plus but shortages later on, or of having initial shortage and surplus later on.
According to the ancient law, land was taken as the base. Taxes were paid on
the basis of land. Since the people resided on the land. they set the land bound-
aries straight. Since [taxes were based on] what each man collected [in harvest],
there were no evils. The T'ang and Koryo systems took men as the basis [for