LATE CHOSON PROPOSALS 375
Like Yu Hyongwon Tasan also argued that the equal-field system of the North-
ern Wei and Tang dynasties was too difficult to operate hecause it required con-
stant revision in the distribution ofland as people died and children became adults.
Furthermore. that system did not provide for variations in land grants to take
into account differences of fertility. Although he did not take solace, as Yu did,
in overcoming the complexity of population movement and other fom1s of change
by insisting on fixing land boundaries in embossed squares to create a stable
and unchanging basis for land distribution and taxation, he did conclude that
the limited-field system would not work because it would be impossible to pre-
vent people from buying and selling land on their own, especially if they bought
land in the name of other people, and state ownership was the only possible for-
mula for successful redistribution.^54
Tasan stressed the importance of the community in sharing the ownership of
land and the work associated with production, and he believed that the opti-
mum community (yi'i, named after one of the putative communities in the Chou
era) should consist of about thirty families. The crop produced by a commu-
nity working on land owned by the state but granted to individual households
would be turned over to the head of the thirty-family unit called the vojang,
who would then allocate after-tax shares of the crop to the families on the basis
of work performed by family members. Individual peasants were to be remu-
nerated at the rate of 4 toe (-4 mal, or 10-4 mal for a 26-day month?, 124.8 mal
or 8.32 sam/year) for every day of labor. Agricultural tools, however, could be
owned privately by individuals. Taxes would be fixed for each community hased
on a constant rate of 10 percent of the crop and a one-time assessment of the
fertility of its land and a calculation of the community's average tax yield over
the past.
Possibly Tasan's greatest departure from Yu Hyongwon's plan was to elimi-
nate land grants altogether (let alone extra-large ones) for the scholars and offi-
cials, and provide only salaries for the support of incumbent officials. He felt
that since they did not work the land, they were entitled neither to land grants
nor to a share of the harvest, but on the other hand nothoi of yangban (soo/)
would be eligible for a land grant under his system because he hoped to con-
vert them from idle and despised memhers of the elite into productive members
of society. 55 Tasan had little use for the yangban in his own time because they
exploited the common peasants, acted with arrogance toward their inferiors, and
spent lives of total idleness. 56 Although he acknowledged that in ancient times
a legitimate distinction had been made between the sa (scholars) and the peas-
ants or agriculturalists (nang), the sa of contemporary Korea did not deserve
support from the public coffers because they did not serve at court, engage in
agriculture, or perform any labor service for the country. He prescribed that under
his system all the sa not employed in office were either to opcn up new lands
for cultivation, or study the improvement of agricultural technology, animal hus-
bandry, irrigation, and tools to help the peasants. Only those men who did engage