Confucian Statecraft and Korean Institutions. Yu Hyongwon and the Late Choson Dynasty - James B. Palais

MILITARY FINANCE 475

cause of the insufficiency of funds for military defense. He proposed, therefore,
that men who had no official posts, including sons or younger brothers of high
officials and scholars as well as commoners, should be required to pay an annual
cloth tax of one p 'il from the age of twenty (i.e., twenty se). This proposal went
beyond King Injo's attempt in 1626 to impose a fine on school students who
failed their qualifying tests because it was aimed at the host of elite tax and ser-
vice evaders who did not even bother to claim a student exemption. By recog-
nizing that military service was more of a tax than service problem, Kim had
also adjusted his thinking to real circumstances. His proposal sparked a debate
that was to last for the next two centuries - the imposition of a military cloth
tax on yangban households. It was not to be adopted, however, until the era of
reform under the Taewongun in 1870. Note also that the one p 'il rate was half
that proposed by Yu Hyongwon. At this time. however, King Hyojong merely
noted that there had been a recent increase in military registration, obviating
the need for Kim's proposal. As Ch'a Munsop pointed out in his study of this
period, the king and the ruling class had no interest in reducing their tax-exemp-
tion privileges. q

Yu Kye's Yangban Tux Proposal, 1659

The suggestion to impose the military cloth levy on the yangban ruling elite was

raised again in 1659, when the country was suffering from a third year of famine

and the pressure on state finances to provide both relief and funds for military

defense was particularly acute. Assistant Vice-Minister (Ch'amji) of the Min-

istry of War Yu Kye told Hyojong that it was unfair that the military cloth levies

(kunp (), alone of all types of taxes, had not yet been reduced to provide relief

to the peasants. It was the most onerous of all taxes, the worst evil in the king-

dom since its "poison" had been extended to the neighbors and relatives of run-

away peasants.

If something is not done immediately to change it, within a few years there

will be no adult males of good status r yangjong lleft in the whole country. Even

if you have worthless military registers with a million names on them, it will

only [represent] an accumulation of ragc and resentment [by those illegally reg-

istered] without at all providing hope [for a full complement of troops] on the

day when a crisis occurs. 15

He proposed eliminating from the military tax rosters the deceased, aged, and

young, who did not belong on them in the first place. and cutting the rate in half

to one p'il of cloth for support taxpayers of regular soldiers. The loss of rev-

enue occasioned by this reduction would be made up by imposing the cloth levy

on the sons and younger brothers of the sadaehu (officials and scholars, i.e.,

yangban).