LATE CHOSON PROPOSALS 377
lands (tllnjon) controlled by civil and military officials, and convert them to well-
field lands with a one-ninth tax rate from the cultivators. This measure would
also eliminate the loss of revenue caused by the extortion and embezzlements
of the palace estate stewards (tojang).
The capital guards could even be given leave from their duties and allowed
to cultivate the military colonies in the vicinity of the capital, and the lands under
the control of magistrates for yamen expenses, clerks' salaries, post station costs,
grazing lands, ferry stations, and hostels could be converted to well-field prin-
ciples as well. Even if it were not possible to convert all odd-shaped fields in
the hills to well-field dimensions, the government could still use the fish-scale
registers to record cultivated land accurately.fio
Under this revised plan the cultivators would possess eight of the individual
plots and manage them independently, a combination of public ownership and
private control that Yu Hyongwon had made clear was a main feature of the Chou
system. Nevertheless, Tasan added a new feature to the classical scheme by divid-
ing the types of work involved in agriculture into six specialties: grain, fruit,
vegetables, cotton, forestry, and animal husbandry (in addition to commerce and
nonagricultural artisanry). Each man had to specialize in one of these occupa-
tions and would not bc allowed to change. Tasan allowed these specialists to
volunteer to perform their tasks in specific locations without much limitation
on the amount of land they were allowed to use, primarily to raise the income
of the commune through the sale of their products in the domestic market and
to China.
Although Tasan insisted that the sages of antiquity had required this profes-
sionalization of occupation, Kim Yongsop claimed that his argument was really
a distortion of the classics to justify improvement in the quality and efficiency
of work in Korea, and that he was inspired to do so because he had been influ-
enced by the growing differentiation of labor and the sale of commodity prod-
ucts in the market that had been taking place in a number of areas.hl
Like his earlier, more radical yojon plan, Tasan also insisted that the distrib-
ution of either land or income be limited to the peasants according to the labor
power (i.e., productivity) of the family rather than the individual. Now he defined
the optimal family as eight individuals (instead of his previous ten), five or six
of whom would be able to work the land, and this family, called the "basic farmer
[family]" (wonbu), would receive a I oo-myo grant. "Other males" (yobu) would
only receive an allocation of 25 myo, but he mcant by this term primarily a con-
jugal family of husband and wife and possibly minor children, and not simply
unmarried or elderly single males.
He appears to have borrowed Yu Hyongwon's definition of 100 mvo as a par-
cel upon which could be planted 40 mal of seed, 40 turak (majigi. colloquially)
or 8,000 p'yong (6.5 acres at 1,224 p'yong/acre), and he calculated the yield
from that area as varying from 600 to 4,000 mal of millet, compared to Yu's esti-
mate of 1,600 mal of unhulled or 800 mal of hulled ricc. The plot of a conjugal