The second key feature was the land-tax system, which had developed from the kwajonbob land reforms (the Rank Land Law) promulgated in 1391 by Yi Song-gye and his Confucian literati as a socio-political reform. In principle, this system acknowledged no private land ownership, for the State officially owned all the nation's land. Therefore, the 'tenant system' was the only viable method of farming, and only farmers (most likely peasants, but never yangban) were the tenants of either 'public land (kongjon)' or 'private land (sajon)'. The State collected rent directly from tenants of 'public land'. 'Private land', on the other hand, was allocated to officials according to their rank with the right to collect rent from tenants, but without ownership rights. 'Rank' land was inherited and in effect converted over time into
outright ownership. Thus, from the beginning of the Yi dynasty, yangban landlords established the trend of building up their private estates, termed agricultural estates (nongjang), despite the formal principle of state ownership.
The yangban bureaucrats not only possessed 'rank land' as well as large amounts of 'merit subject land', both allocated by
government, but also expanded their landholdings by using their political and financial power through methods such as purchase, outright seizure, and reclamation. Thus they progressively
acquired every available land holding, particularly "the abundant state owned lands in the three provinces (Ch'ungch'ong, Cholla, and Kyongsang) of the fertile southern third of the country
...."16 Han U-kun, Professor of History at Seoul National
University, comments on the social impact of this phenomenon as follows :
"Perhaps the most ominous trend in the expansion of the nongjang was the removal from the tax rolls of the tenant farmers on them. Just as during the Koryo dynasty, government revenues shrank as the nongjang grew, and nongjang tenants were also withdrawn from corvee labor and military service. This led many farmers to enter the service of the landlords to escape taxes and corvee."17
The Rank Land Law was revised through the introduction of the Tribute Tax Law (kongbob) in 1444, when the formerly one tenth state rent rate was lowered to one-twentieth of the harvest supposedly to ease the burden of the peasantry. Tenant-farmers, however, continued to be obliged to share their crops on a 50-50 basis with their landowners under a practice called 'crop
sharing', and the state rent was now payed only by the
landowners. This heavy burden on tenant farmers led to their massive dispossession and impoverishment, and the expansion of nongjang by the yangban landlords inevitably resulted in a reduction of government tax revenue.
The tribute tax, also known as 'local tribute' (t'okong), was even more detrimental to farmers, for levies placed on
specialised local products and craft goods were more expensive to provide than the land tax. An 'indirect payment' (pangnab) system, introduced by yangban bureaucrats, through which they delivered tribute goods to the State and collected the cost of the goods from peasant farmers, led to farmers paying increased tribute tax, and further exploitation by the yangban. By the end of the 16th century, the abuse of the tribute tax forced farmers to opt out of their tenancies, passing their debt to those who remained. This merely exacerbated the problem, forcing even more
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farmers to flee the land.
The social epidemic of 'runaway-farmers' was one of the
contributing factors to the government introducing the 'Uniform Land Tax L a w ' (taedongbob) in 1708. The taedongbob, also referred to as the 'rice payment law', was a mandatory payment system under which farmers were liable to pay directly to a newly
established government agency, Sonhyech ' ong. Payment of the new tax could be also made from the harvest, or with coins (taedong- jon) or cotton cloth (taedongp'o) . This system was aimed at
protecting peasant farmers from the abuses of the landlords.
The government revenue agency, being in receipt mainly of farm produce, money and cotton cloth, appointed special purchasing officers from merchants (or the kongin group) of the sangmin
(commoner) class to purchase government requirements. The
appointment of these officers, called 'tribute m e n ' (kongin) , was a key factor in the creation of an entirely new class of
merchants, and ironically progressively eroded the feudalism that had necessitated their appointment. The taedongbob was also a desperate government measure to raise State funds. After the Japanese Invasion in 1592, the dynasty, known as 'the
agricultural State', was devastated and was facing a financial crisis. The State had not only wasted farm land while engaged in war, but had also lost land registers. Three other critical
factors which had led the State into the fiscal crisis were: factional strife amongst the yangban class; the continuing increase of the yangban population as a result of the
deregulation of State examinations both in terms of their frequency and the number of successful candidates selected 18; and most crucially, the increase of tax-free land owned by royal
in-law families.17
The third key feature of the feudal social system which oppressed with peasantry was the military and its corvee system, which was structured to provide governments (central and local) with
m ilitary personnel and corvee labour. Every male was subject to conscription into national service as long as he was assessed as being in sound physical condition. In theory, military duty was required on a rotational basis, and corvee labour could be
required for a fixed limited period, but no more than six days in a single year. In practice, however, the corvee labour system had no restrictions on either the period or frequency of call up. Furthermore, changes in the military duty system led many
peasants to become landless tenants on nongjang owned by yangban (in some cases peasants preferred to become slaves of yangban in order to avoid both military and corvee labour duties), or simply wanderers.
Originally the military service and corvee labour obligations were quite distinct. The military roster system, however, was expanded when the 'paired provisioner system' was introduced, which required conscripted soldiers not only to keep standard duty, but also to support 'paired duty'. This expansion of military rosters drew on local manpower resources and led to
severe difficulties in filling corvee labour quotas. As a result, soldiers were required to provide corvee duty themselves. The soldiers, in turn, hired stand-in-labourers with the resources at their disposal from their 'provisioners' (poin) and thus
substituted their corvee obligation. This unofficial expense for substitute corvee labourers, however, became a social issue when the soldiers began to be forced to make payment directly to
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