364 LAND REFORMthe beginning of the dynasty, reflecting the pathetic agricultural conditions after
the invasions and the government's desire to reduce taxation to a minimum to
aid the subsistence of the peasant population?4
As mentioned above, in the early eighteenth century Yi Ik wrote that the
yield/seed ratio for rice on the worst land was no more than lO/,. Although he
thought the ratio on the best land might be as high as 6'}'j, he doubted if that were
so. His overall estimate, therefore, did not indicate a major rise in productivity
in the century after the Imjin War. Tasan (ChOng Yagyong) in the early nine-
teenth century estimated that the yield/seed ratio on the best paddy land was
[O(/[ and 2'/r for the worst, but he also estimated the yield per "J'iJ! at 800 mal for
the best land, 600 mal for land of moderate fertility, and 400 mal for the least
fertile, or 40, 30, and 20 som/kyol by his ealculations.^25 This latter set of figures
indicated that the yield on the best land may have declined slightly while the
worst land may have produced two times more than it had at the beginning of
the dynasty.
Tasan also made estimates for the yield/seed ratio in the Cholla Province bread-
basket area, but they did not indicate any increase in productivity over the pre-
vious century! He estimated that for Chima Province I kyol of the most fertile
paddy land was equivalent to 20 majigi (turak in Sino-Korean pronunciation,
the amount of land on which 20 mal could be planted as seed) while the poor-
est land was equivalent to 40 majigi. Thus the yield from r kylil (or 20 majigi)
of prime paddy was 1,200 mal or 60 s(J!11 by Tasan's calculations, a yield/seed
ratio 01'6'/[, while the yield on the poorest land (40 majigi) was 400 mal or 20
som and a ratio of 10/,. Thus, in ChOlla the yield/seed ratio was almost identical
to Yi Ik's estimate a century before, while the per kyol product on the most fer-
tile land was higher than other provinces, but not higher than the best land in
the early Choson period.^26
A ratio of ten grains for every seed sown, let alone sixty, was of course sig-
nificantly larger than the average low yields from wheat cultivation in Europe
from the fifteenth through the eighteenth centuries. Fernand Braudel estimated
the average yield/seed ratio at no more than V, and sometimes less, with one
grain deducted for the next season's planting, and an average yield per hectare
at 7.5 hectolitres or about 17.6 bushels per hectare or 7- 16 bushels per acre.^27
The Japanese were the first to introduce modem measurements into the study
of Korean agriculture, and Hoon K. Lee's study of Korean agriCUlture in 1936
based on Japanese colonial government statistics showed an average yield for
all varieties of rice at 17. 17 bushels per acre from 191 I to 19 I 5, while Hishi-
mota Ch6ji found in 1938 a slightly lower rice yield per acre at the beginning
of the colonial period in I9IO of 15.55 bushels (38.1 bushels/ha, or 0-473 met-
ric tons/acre)?8 This figure could have been smaller in the mid-nineteenth cen-
tury or earlier, but in any case it was about double the average wheat production
per acre in Europe through the eighteenth century, indicating, as Braudel pointed
out for the rice culture of East Asia in general, that Korean agricultural produc-
tivity was far in advance of Europe. Nevertheless, despite the Korean evidence