DEBATE OVER MILITARY TRAINING AGENCY 445
surveillance (oga chakt 'ong) systems to reduce the number of deserters. Increas-
ing soldiers and the supply of military rations proved impossible in the midst
of famine, and he was not able to attain the 1O,000-man quota by the time of
his death that year.s
In King Hyonjong's reign, in 1662, Yi Wan proposed a method of financing
Military Training Agency musketeers by almost the same plan that Yu had rec-
ommended in his writings. Since the agency already had 19,690 support taxpayers
(four for each of the approximately 1,500 cavalrymen, and three for each of the
4,100 infantrymen), he proposed to recruit an additional 9,000 support taxpay-
ers to pay for the costs of the musketeers. The additional taxpayers would enable
the tax rate to be reduced from the burdensome three p'il/taxpayer to two p'il.
Because it was too difficult a task for the agency to carry out the investiga-
tion and recruitment of new support taxpayers, Yi Wan suggested an incentive
system by which the current support taxpayers would recruit new ones. Each
pair of support taxpayers would be granted a reduction of his current rate from
three to two p 'il if they could recruit another adult male to sign on as a support
taxpayer. He assumed that it would take five or six years for this incentive sys-
tem to produce the additional 9,000 taxpayers. Hyonjong approved the plan, sub-
sequently referred to as "combining support taxpayers" (pyongbo, happo) or
"marginal support taxpayers" (malbo).6
Yi Wan's recommendation shows that by 1661 the support-taxpayer system
already played an important role in the financing of the Military Training Agency
in addition to revenues from the samsu land surtax and military colony lands,
but that it was by no means a panacea. The high tax rate was stimulating tax
evasion and financial shortage. His plan was also testimony to the helplessness
of the central government in ferreting out runaways or unregistered men to put
on the military tax rolls. Why, for example, would anyone not currently paying
taxes be willing to sign up for a two-p 'il rate? And if the plan attracted taxpay-
ers already paying higher rates for other duty soldiers, it would only reduce rev-
enues in another sector.
According to a notice in the Daily Record of the Grand Secretariat
(Sungjongwon ilgi), in the first lunar month of 1669, Song Siyol in a court dis-
cussion with King Hyonjong praised the system by which the Royal Division
was organized and proposed that the Military Training Agency's troops be abol-
ished by attrition.7 According to another source, the Revised Veritable Record
of King Hyonjong (Hyonjong kaesu sillok), Song praised both the Military Train-
ing Agency and the Crack Select Soldiers but suggested not only that the agency
be eliminated by attrition, but that it should be reorganized along the lines of
both the Crack Select Soldiers and Royal Division.s
Song pointed out that paying rations for the 7,000 troops of the Military Train-
ing Agency imposed too heavy a burden on the national treasury. The unit had
not been a fundamental part of the dynasty's military system as created by the
founding kings, and the only reason King Sonjo created it was because he needed
some men to share "weal and woe during the difficulties [of the Imjin War]."