494 MILITARY REFORMas well as men) and adopting the household cloth system. Yi Sehwa had also
approved of the household cloth system, on condition that the two-p 'il tax on
soldiers (i.e., men liable for military service) be eliminated and that the house-
hold cloth levy (presumably two p'il) be paid only by the one man in a family
who was to be trcated as if he were a soldier (here referred to as H'onhlJ, or basic
householder); the other adult male dependents in the family (solchOng) would
only pay half the rate (one p 'il). This refinement would have increased revenues
over Yi Samyong's estimate, and if there were still shortages of revenue, they
could be made up by cloth taxes collected from currently "idle" males or other
types. Yi said he was certain that any slaves or commoners liable for military
service would approve his proposal.
He also pointed out that at the same time the court ordered the household cloth
system adopted in his province, it had also ordered a weeding out of phony offi-
cial school students (kyosaeng) and military officers (kun 'gwan) by special exam-
inations, an order which threw all the "idle and leisured" tax evaders into a fit
because thcy knew that enrollment for service would hit them in the pocket-
book. But when the order to implement the household cloth tax came down,
they changed their minds because they realized that it would be cheaper for their
families. as households. to pay the household cloth levy than for them as indi-
viduals (now signed up on the military tax rosters) to pay the per capita two-
p'if tax under the current system. They may also have derived some solace in
that the families of ministers and regular officials would also be paying the tax.
Thus, Yi concluded, the enthusiasm of the scholar-official class for the house-
hold cloth system may have been less than commoners and slaves, but their atti-
tude was nonetheless positive.
This means that all the court officials, military degree-holders. literary and clas-
sics licentiates [samgwiin and chima], men with rank but no office [p'umgwan],
and passers of the preliminary examination [leading to the highest civil exami-
nation (kwagil) J fear that thcir sons, grandsons, brothers and family memhers
might not only he eliminatcd from the official schools or the [ranks of the Mili-
tary Officers] by failing the literary and archery examinations, they might also
bc subject to the exactions levied on neighbors and rclatives [to make up short-
ages in military support tax revcnues]. So even though their desire [for the
household cloth tax] may not he as great as the slaves and the [commoner] sol-
diers, one might deduce that there would be more of them who would want it
than not.His feeling was that the only ones really to oppose the new law would be the
unscrupulous types who spent all their time devising ways to evade taxes any-
way. Yi was sure that none of the people of the province wanted continuation
of the present problems of the military service and tax system: levying the tax
on both male and female slaves, requiring a two-p'il payment from every adult
male of good status liable for military service, continuing to entrust responsi-