PART III CONCLUSION 389
that was probably stymied by population growth by the end of the seventeenth
century. On the contrary, by the end of the Choson dynasty those same phenomena
had also produced severe anomalies in the distribution of wealth and much suf-
fering by the poorest peasants. Whatever developments had taken place in com-
merce and industry, it was not sufficient to absorb surplus labor in any new factory
towns and raisc the overall standard of living by providing a peaceful, alternate
economic exit from the pressures of agrarianism. By the middle of the nine-
teenth century the only way out of this situation was massive peasant rebellion,
but that rebellion was still crushed by the superior forces of the ailing dynasty.
While the rebellion at least stimulated a mild reform movement under the Tae-
wongun in the I 860s, the yearnings of the mid-Choson reformers for public own-
ership and redistribution was neither achieved nor attempted. Disaster was
postponed for a couple of decades until the same scenario was repeated again
in the Tonghak Rebellions of 1894-95, and Yu Hyongwon and his successors
in the Confucian reform movement remained outcasts in the wilderness. appeal-
ing to their vision of a more ideal distribution of landed wealth.