Confucian Statecraft and Korean Institutions. Yu Hyongwon and the Late Choson Dynasty - James B. Palais

322 LAND REFORM

have no land at all, [or should we] be concerned over the fact that after land is

equally distrihuted to all the people [under my kongjl5n system] there might he

a few people left over [who do not get a sufficient share]? .. It is only that in

the case of public land, [tenure and distribution] is fair Ikong] and equal [kyull],

but in the case of private land, it is private [sa] and skewed [p'yi!n].28

And, he continued, only a public land system could guarantee constant production

for everyone, the necessary material foundation for moral transformation.^29

Rejection of More Practical Administrative Reforms

Overwhelmed by Yu's Socratic skill in destroying the case for either land limi-
tation or regulated tenancy, Yu's adversary had to concede that public owner-
ship might indeed be the best system. Nevertheless, if it proved too difficult to
carry out right away because of potential opposition, it might be better to adopt
as an interim measure a major cadastral survey of the land and the use of a tally
system of registration (hop ae) (to identify people for labor or military service).3^0
Yu was not disposed favorably to this method either because "it would require
constant bother and easily lead to corruption ... and the results obtained would
be shallower and of shorter duration."}! Land parcels might be recorded on the
registers, but land boundaries would not be clearly established on the land itself.
Adopting a tally system would be as troublesome as confiscation but without
any effect. There would be no correlation between land and people or between
the distribution of land and the distribution of tax and labor or military service.
Under a tally system people would seek to avoid registration to evade service
obligations. but under his public ownership and distribution scheme they would
not avoid registration because it would guarantee them a land grant. The com-
mon people would thus have every reason to obey the lawY

Weights and Measures

Yu's plan for land reform also included a small treatise on the need for stan-
dardization of weights and measures not only because he had proposed replac-
ing the kyol-bu system based on a constant unit of crop volume by a unit of area
based on linear measurement, but because one of the major causes of peasant
exploitation was the manipulation of weights and measures by tax clerks to extort
higher payments. He believed that a return to the simplicity and standardization
of ancient standards could solve many of the problems of contemporary Korean
society.
Yu realized that the superiority of a system of standardized weights and mea-
sures for the whole nation had been clearly elucidated in The Book of History
(Shu-ching). The sage Emperor Shun had seen to it that all the pitch-pipes, lin-
ear and volume measures. and balances all conformed to standards whenever
he went on hunting expeditions throughout his empire. The policy of maintaining