378 LAND REFORMfamily, 25 myo, would have been about IO turak or 1.6 acres. He also mentioned
that 100 myo in Ch611a Province (he was exiled in Kangjin) was equivalent to
I kyol of poor land (or .5 kyol of medium land).
He arranged for the assignment of parcels on the basis of the capacity and
productivity of the peasant. The best farmers and those with the most labor would
be awarded the most fertile land because in the daily world of experience land-
lords always rented their best land to tenants with the most labor power and oxen
of their own. To do otherwise would have reduced the size of the product. Grant-
ing land to peasants just to provide relief from poverty was unjustifiable because
in ancient times the government did not grant land to the sick and the widowed;
they simply provided for them through community relief. The tax rate would
be limited because the peasants would pool their labor on the one parcel of pub-
lic land (kongjon) first, an equivalent of a one-ninth tax since the eight heads
of households in a well-field would presumably only be spending one-ninth their
time on that plot.h2
Since the introduction of the well-fields would take place incrementally, he
also provided that in those areas where they could not be adopted the magis-
trate might try to distribute rental land more evenly by ensuring that each ten-
ant might cultivate the equivalent of two parcels of land (50 myo at 25 myo per
parcel), and soldiers on colony land might also be given one or two parcels as
well on a 50 percent sharecropping basis. Larger amounts could be allowed for
newly reclaimed land.^63
Tasan placed more emphasis in his revised scheme on raising production rather
than on equal distribution of property because he felt it was quixotic to imag-
ine that the latter could ever be totally accomplished, and he hoped that justice
could be achieved at least by reducing the tax to a consistent 10 percent of the
crop. He also warned that the government should not increase its taxes on the
community as its prosperity increased lest it stifle the prospect of future growth.
He favored hiring labor to cultivate commercial products or to till the land in
place of duty soldiers, especially given the increasing number of landless peas-
ants that had been driven off the land by the land grabbing of rich landlords. He
even hoped to hire slaves (tonghok) for this purpose, presumably the slaves owned
by peasants that Tasan expected would be brought with families of basic peas-
ant households (wonbu) to cultivate their IOo-myo parcels. Since Tasan calcu-
lated his basic household at eight pcrsons, four more than one might expect for
a normal average, and he also estimated the number of workers at five or six,
the remainder probably included slaves, or hired slaves, and unmarried males
in addition to other family members, a calculation that Yu Hyongwon also made
in calculating family size.
In Yu Hy6ngwon's plan the use of slaves, especially for the cultivation of the
land of the officials, was intended to be temporary because he hoped that slav-
ery would eventually dic out, but Tasan expressed no compunction about using
slaves to raise production. Kim Yongsop has argued that Tasan's willingness to