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

REDISTRIBUTING WEALTH 335

human desire fueled by the instructions of the classics and the ethical statesmen
and scholars of the past meant that he could brook no compromise with it. Slav-
ery was wrong, but he could have perceived it as but an extreme case of social
hierarchy, which in principle was acceptable. Judging from trends of thought
among reformers after Yu's death, Yu appears to have been the exception
because almost all abandoned the idea of confiscation of private property as a
chimerical fancy.

Sadaebu: Scholars and Officials

Yu's system of land grants was not confined to the class of cultivating peasants,

whether commoners or slaves, for he also provided that "everyone who per-

forms a function or service [chigy(,)k] [for the state]" would receive additional

land grants over and above the basic one-kyong peasant allotment, scaled in accor-

dance with the importance of the function. Service or officeholding would also

carry with it exemption from military service.^69 Yu defined function or service

in much broader terms than existing practice because he included clerks, run-

ners, and petty officials in this category, people who received no official sup-

port in the seventeenth eentury and were forced to make ends meet by collecting

fees or taking bribes.

In his plan petty clerks and runners employed in the bureaus ofthe central gov-

ernment at the capital would receive salaries but no land grants; clerks and run-

ners in the provinces serving in magistrates' yamen and other agencies would

be alloted salary land (nokchon) only. Minor local officials such as messengers,

guards, keepers of grazing lands, ferrymen, tomb, forest, and shrine guards would

receive one kVallg of land. All petty officials would be exempted [rom military

service or the payment of cloth support taxes.?°Yujustified exemption [or office-

holders, no matter how menial the occupation, in terms o[ ancient precedent.? I

In the case of petty officials, however, land or salary grants and exemption from

military duty were tied strictly to service; these men were not to be part of the

sadaebu, Yu's ideal ruling class.

The lowest category ofYu's ideal ruling class was to consist of the sa or schol-

ars, but contrary to the current loose custom of allowing sons of yangban to claim

scholarly status as yuhak whether they merited it or not, Yu sought to restrict

the claim, with some exceptions, to students registered in schools. This plan

depended, of course, on the successful establishment of an extensive school sys-

tem, described in chapter 5. Students classified as extra-quota students residing

in the outer dormitories of the schools would receive a land grant of two kyang,

and regular students in the inner dormitories would receive fOllr kyallg.

The taebu or regular officials of the central bureaucracy would receive grants

ranging from six to twelve kyang depending on the rank associated with their

official post. 72 This scheme of providing a scale of extra land grants (i.e., greater

than the one-kyi5ng allotment to the commoner peasant) was Yu \ solution to the

problem of guaranteeing economic support to the sadaebu or ruling class. These