428 MILITARY REFORM
one shift, with hi,gher quotas for the northern and northwestern provinces accord-
ing to the need.^94
Discrimination Against Men of Low Status. Despite Yu's arduous attempt to
work out flexible arrangements so that thc burden of service would not fall too
heavily on anyone type of soldier, his regulations in fact provided for differen-
tial rates that would easily lead to evasion in practice. By varying the number of
men to be provided for military service based on both the type of service and
the status of the soldiers involved, he was departing from his supposed egali-
tarian idea1.^95 Thus the service obligation for men of good status in the cavalry
and infantry was assessed at the lowest rate - one man for every four kyong of
land (or one duty soldier for every four heads of household). Grain transport work-
ers (chojol) were recruited on the basis of one man for every three kyong, sailors
(subu) and slave soldiers (sog'ogun) at the rate of one man for every two kyong,
and a number of other types such as able oarsmen, beacon station soldiers, atten-
dants, flag bearers, drummers, herdsmen, and tomb guards at the rate of one man
for everyone kyong of land. In other words, the service burden was four times
heavier for men in the last category than regular soldiers of good status.
Able oarsmen were also to be recruited from among both official and private
slaves living close to coastal naval bases, and they were not to be provided with
support taxpayers as other commoner soldiers were. If the men earned their
living as fishermen, however, land could not be used as a basis of recruitment,
and the rate of service for both commoners and slaves was to be one oarsman
for every two fishermen. Tomb guards were to be recruited from slaves as well
as commoners, and both would enjoy exemption from the land tax as com-
pensati on. 96
Yu's usc of a variety of land/service ratios, tantamount to a variety of mili-
tary service tax rates, was less a method for equalizing service burdens or rates
than it was a means of discrimination based on status and prestige levels.
Reduction of Tax Rates. Yu also believed that he could reduce the burden on
support taxpayers by reducing the amount of tax each would have to pay. Under
his reform regulations the musketeers and horse soldiers on duty in capital guard
units. for example, would receive eight p 'il of cloth, two from each of four sup-
port personnel residing in the provinces. Yu declared that he was thus reducing
the tax rate on support taxpayers from the current three p 'il to two, but increas-
ing the number of support taxpayers from three to four.^97
As the history of the military service and tax system was to demonstrate after
Yu's death, the attempt to alleviate tax burdens on support taxpayers by reduc-
ing higher rates to two p 'il was doomed to failure for two reasons. The rate had
to be sufficiently low that people would not consider it too onerous and attempt
to evade it, and it had to be uniform so that there would be no opportunities for
evaders to sign up for lower service rates. In Yu's own time, there were some
rates lower than two p'il so that a two-p'il rate constituted a tax raise for some
taxpayers, and in the century after his death two p 'il came to be regarded as a
high rate, inducing tax evaders to find officials who would sign them up, whether