LATE CHOSON PROPOSALS 369He imagined that in the Chou in the upland areas the fields were all dry and the
boundaries were set by sluices and ditches and the plants on the dikes drew off
the water from the ditches, an impractical arrangement for modem wet-rice agri-
culture in Korea. Furthermore, well-fields could only have been laid out in the
plains and divided up by embankments that served as walkways, but water stag-
nated in the fields. and eventually the wind and rain broke down the embank-
ments. Thus, recreating the ancient methods of agriculture as well as the raised
embankments was almost impossibleY
Yi Ik also shrank from both Yu Hyongwon's plan for total nationalization and
redistribution and any coerced confiscation of excessive landholdings. He
argued that although some might think that force would be necessary to get the
large landlords to divest themsel ves of some of their property, if force were used,
"it would destroy the law." No owner should be forced to sell land against his
will, and no peasant with insufficient holdings should be allowed to importune
a large landlord to sell his land to him. Instead, each individual would be rec-
ognized as having rights to TOO myo or I kyang of permanent land (YCJllg'i)pchOn),
in emulation of Lin Hstin of the Sung dynasty, who proposed a limit of 50 myo
of permanent land and argued that 50 myo was sufficient because 41 nzyo at that
time was equivalent to IOO myo or I kyi)ng in the Chou pcriod. The only pro-
hibition that Yi attached to this permanent land was a ban on the sale of any part
of it. Sales would only be permitted of land owned above the 1 -kyi)ng perma-
nent land parcel to prevent a poor peasant from selling his last remaining plot
to pay a debt, protecting him from the overwhelming monetary power of the
rich who had enough wealth to buy all the land they wanted from the poor.
Yi thought that through the normal practice of subdivision of property among
male heirs, within a few generations the surplus landholdings of the rich would
be reduced as a matter of course, but this was a mild, cautious, and probably
worthless method of land redistribution for the benefit of the poor and landless
peasants. Despite Yi's sympathy for the plight of the poor peasants, he was even
more limited than Yu had been by his consideration for the sensitivities of the
yangban landlonis.^43 But this did not mean that he favored free market capital-
ism and profit maximization as the solution to the distribution crisis; on the con-
trary he advocated realistic means of limiting property ownership and preventing
free purchase and sale to protect the smallholders from the loss of their land.
Han Woo-keun in his extensive study ofYi Ik has pointed out that So Myongsin
actually recommended a limited-field system to King Yongjo in 1740 because
restoration of the well-field system was impossible, but Yongjo rejected it
because he did not think it would be possible to confiscate all land over the
limit established by the stale and grant it to poor pcasants, especially since the
large landlords included the sadaebu (i.e., yangban). In other words, Yongjo
shrank from even a land-limitation program, let alone total confiscation,
because he feared a direct challenge to the interests of yangban !44 But does this
mean that King Yongjo defended landlord interests because he thought private
ownership of land represented a progressive force in Korean society, or that he