CONFUCIAN STATECRAFT 47
cavalry, and marines, provided elements that were worthy of emulation. Chong
advised that the capital guards should consist of rotating shifts of duty soldiers
(ponsang kyongjik).6^4
Since the early Choson kings did not establish a true militia system and did
not provide land grants to all soldiers, let alone all peasants, they obviously had
no intention of recreating the militia model of the Chou dynasty. Instead adult
males liable for military service were divided into duty soldiers who rotated on
and off duty and support taxpayers who paid taxes to support the on-duty sol-
diers. The fiction of universal service was maintained by requiring nonofficial
relatives of officials and men with official rank but no posts to hold some form
of military service, usually in elite guard units. In the provinces, a hierarchy of
units from the provincial governors and provincial military commanders
descended to individual garrisons along the coasts, the northern frontier, and at
strategic locations inland.6s
This early Choson system was not necessarily insufficient for the problems
of the time, especially since there were no threats of a major invasion from the
continent, but it did not represent the ultimate plan proposed by Chong Tojon
of universal militia service backed up by land grants to peasant soldiers.
THE TAXATION SYSTEM
The tax system of the Choson dynasty represented a major breakthrough for the
central government because it solved the fiscal crisis of the state that had plagued
the late Koryo central government. By funneling more resources into the hands
of the king and central bureaucracy than had been received since the early Koryo
dynasty, it provided full funding for the royal house, official salaries, central
and local government expenses, and military costs, especially for the defense
of the country against the Wak6 pirates.
On the other hand, since the tax system was based on principles established
centuries before in both China and Korea, it reflected the relatively undeveloped
state of the Korean agricultural economy. Instead of using money in the form
of copper cash, silver coins, or paper bills and relying on the market for the pur-
chase of goods needed by the state, the government relied on the collection of
the land tax in bags of grain, the levying of specialized products in the form of
tribute payments in kind from local communities, and the requisition of forced
labor from the commoner population and from official slaves, many of which
had been slaves of Buddhist temples confiscated by the state.
Uncompensated labor service, in particular, was responsible for the greatest
form of state intrusion into the lives of private individuals in Choson society. It
was involved not only in the arduous work of transporting grain taxes and trib-
ute items from the village to various points of collection including land and sea
transportation to the capital, but also the manufacture of certain items as well.
It was required as part of the expense in putting up kings as they made their way
in royal progresses and hunting expeditions through the countryside, Korean