CHAPTER 22
The Taedong Modelfor Official
Salaries and Expenses
"If anyone should speak out and say that I royal tribute] has plagued the coun-
try and caused the loss of virtue, others only point to them and say that they
have no respect for their king. This is the reason why it would never end until
every district in the country was destroyed." r
"After the commercial shops have flourished and all kind of goods are circu-
lating, then even though you may have some urgent need [for them], you need
not worry."2Despite his sketchy history of the taedong system, Yu endorsed it as a major
improvement over the traditional tax structure that was based on a fundamen-
tally light tax that produced insufficient revenues and therefore required the gov-
ernment to approve ad hoc levies on the population without any limit on the
amount and frequency. The taedong system, by contrast, made clear just what
the peasants were supposed to pay in taxes every year by establishing a public
tax rate. It provided for a "calculation of financial needs, the collection of tax
rice to meet those needs, and control exercised by the government at court over
expenditures." Despite these advantages, however, Yu pointed out that many offi-
cials were opposed to adopting the system nationwide because they opposed
shifting tribute to the land tax.
Yu argued that the current land tax had been in a state of confusion because
low-level clerks (sowon) had been allowed to control land registration, let alone
steal and expropriate land from peasants, while the district magistrates purposely
kept land "hidden" from the registers themselves. Presumably, since district quo-
tas for the land tax were determined by government figures of registered land
in all districts, those districts with the highest amount of unregistered cultivated
land benefited the most from laxity in cadastral surveys. The only chance ordi-
nary peasants had for relief was to negotiate privately with holders of hidden
land about the division of tax quotas within the district.
If a district had been assessed for only one-tenth the amount of cultivated land
it actually contained, it would produce a revenue shortage that would force the
state to demand special levies to make up the difference. If the government needed
(^815)