A History of Korea (50 page)

After the short reign of the sickly Ky
ŏ
ngjong (1720–1724), the son of the Lady Chang, King Y
ŏ
ngjo (1724–1776) ascended the throne in 1724. He was on the throne for 52 years and was succeeded by his grandson, King Ch
ŏ
ngjo (1776–1800),
in 1776. During the reign of the two kings, the Chos
ŏ
n dynasty enjoyed a period of revival. They tried their best to remedy the adverse situation caused by factional fights, without much success, but the two kings were able, like the Roman emperors Diocletian and Constantine, to slow the dynasty’s rapid decline.

Y
ŏ
ngjo and Ch
ŏ
ngjo weakened factional struggles by advancing a policy of impartiality, called
t’angp’y
ŏ
ngch’aek,
in which no faction was favored over another for official appointments among men of the so-called
sasaek,
or four colors, the four major factions at the time: the Old Doctrine, the Young Doctrine, the Southerners, and the Northerners. But the policy of distributing posts equally failed to completely root out chronic factional strife. In 1762 Y
ŏ
ngjo, on the instigation of the Old Doctrine faction, ordered his officials to execute his own son, Crown Prince Sado (Changh
ŏ
n), who was friendly to the Young Doctrine faction. Out of this tragedy a new conflict arose within the bureaucracy between the
Sip’a,
or Party of Expediency, and the
Py
ŏ
kp’a,
or Party of Principle. Whereas the Party of Expediency deplored the crown prince’s tragic fate, the Party of Principle justified the king’s action. Although the confrontation between the two new groups partially cut across the earlier factional lines, essentially the
Py
ŏ
kp’a
party consisted of the Old Doctrine faction and the
Sip’a
party was composed of the Southerners.

Because of their enhanced royal authority, Y
ŏ
ngjo and Ch
ŏ
ngjo reformed the tax system, increased government revenues, improved military preparedness, and oversaw the revival of learning during their reign. The two kings revived printing by using newly cast movable metal type and published numerous well-known works. Specifically, the scholarly Ch
ŏ
ngjo employed young scholars from various factions in the
Kyujanggak,
or Inner Royal Library, established in 1776, to partake in these projects.

In the aftermath of the Japanese invasion, the Chos
ŏ
n government had urgent matters to resolve; it needed to revive the ruined economy, provide job stability, and increase national revenues. Farmlands had been completely devastated in the war, and the total area under cultivation had greatly decreased. Many land registers had been destroyed, which resulted in illegal transfers of taxpaying lands into the hands of powerful tax-free landlords. The nation’s total taxable land fell from 1.70 million ky
ŏ
l before the war to only 0.54 million ky
ŏ
l in the
reign of Kwanghaegun. The amount the nation could collect in land taxes decreased proportionally.

In the postwar years improvement and reclamation of agricultural land and increased land registers led to the steady growth of taxable farmlands from 0.54 million ky
ŏ
l in the Kwanghaegun period to 1.20 million ky
ŏ
l in the Injo period, 1.40 million ky
ŏ
l in the Sukchong period, and 1.45 ky
ŏ
l in the Y
ŏ
ngjo and Ch
ŏ
ngjo periods. At the same time the total amount of land taxes the state could collect also increased, which contributed to the nation’s economic stability.

The government sought to improve the tax collection system at a time when the tribute tax accounted for some 60 percent of Chos
ŏ
n’s national revenue. Further, gross overcharging of taxes (a practice called
pangnap
) and the exploitation of peasant farmers by tax collectors were among many of the problems causing a disproportionate burden to the peasantry. After the war, the government finally initiated the Taedongp
ŏ
p, a rice payment law that allowed tribute taxes to be paid in rice, which had already been suggested before the war as a means of alleviating the suffering of those who paid the tribute tax. In 1608, urged on by Chief State Councilor Yi W
ŏ
n-ik, the Taedongp
ŏ
p was first carried out in Ky
ŏ
nggi province, and by 1709 it was enforced throughout the country.

The terms of the Taedongp
ŏ
p set a rate of 12 tu (64 kilograms) of rice, about 1 percent of the harvest, for each ky
ŏ
l of farmland, in addition to the standard land taxes. To administer the Taedongp
ŏ
p, the government established the S
ŏ
nhyech’
ŏ
ng, or Agency to Bestow Blessings. Implementation of the new tax law, and the abolition of the tribute tax system, improved state revenues and lightened the economic burden of the peasantry by some 80 percent.

By the time of the Japanese invasion, the Five Commands system was not operational and existed in name only. By 1594, during the course of the war, a special agency for military training, called the Hully
ŏ
n togam, or Military Training Command, was established. It drilled a new fighting force known as the
samsuby
ŏ
ng,
or three combat forces, consisting of
p’osu,
or musketeers;
sasu,
or archers; and
salsu,
or lancers and swordsmen. Later, four new army garrisons were created around the capital, forming a total of five army garrisons, with the Hully
ŏ
n togam as the core element; the four included the Ch’ongyungch’
ŏ
ng, or Command of the Northern Approaches, in 1624; the
Ŏ
y
ŏ
ngch’
ŏ
ng, or Command of the Royal Guards, in 1624; the Su
ŏ
ch’
ŏ
ng, or Command of the Southern Approaches, in 1616; and the K
ŭ
mwiy
ŏ
ng, or Capital Garrison, in 1682.

Soldiers under the command of the five army garrisons were paid their wages by the government. Instead of being called up for military duty themselves, all able-bodied men, specifically peasant farmers, were required to pay a military cloth tax, or kunp’o, of 2 bolts, or 40 feet, of cotton cloth per year, which was used to pay the expenses for the maintenance of professional soldiers.Because powerful landlords were able to shelter their tenant-farmers from this military cloth tax, the entire tax burden again fell to the peasants. And because the price of a bolt of cotton cloth was equivalent to that of 32 kilograms of rice at the time, the peasants’ burden was all the more crushing. Moreover, as targets for extortion, many peasants were forced to flee their land to escape unlawful practices including
hwanggu ch’
ŏ
mj
ŏ
ng,
or fledgling legerdemain, registering boys as adults on whom the military cloth tax could be levied; and
paekkol chingp’o,
or skeleton levies, keeping dead men’s names on tax rosters in order to continue collecting from their surviving relatives. Even as many peasants fled their land to escape these unreasonable charges, their unpaid taxes were forcibly collected from their neighbors (called
inj
ŏ
ng,
or neighbor levies) or from their kinsmen (termed
chokching,
or kinsmen levies).

The malfeasance involved in the collection of the military cloth tax reached a climax in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, and the governemt began to recognize an urgent need for military tax reform. In 1750 a government decree reduced the military cloth tax from two bolts to one. The government compensated for the lost revenue by taxing fish traps, salt production, and private fishing and trading vessels, and by instituting a grain surtax, called
ky
ŏ
lchak
(
ky
ŏ
lmi
), or ky
ŏ
l rice, charging landowners 2 tu, or 11 kilograms, of rice per harvest. The new measure, appropriately called the
Kyuny
ŏ
kp
ŏ
p,
or Equalized Tax Law, along with the implementation of the Taedongp
ŏ
p, succeeded in alleviating much of the suffering endured by the peasantry.

Historically rice has been the staple food of the Koreans. In Chos
ŏ
n rice also was used as currency. Following the wars against the Japanese and the Manchus, the government strove to increase rice yields, which depended on the availability of water. Thus the construction of irrigation facilities became a pressing problem. In 1662 the Che
ŏ
nsa, or Office of Embankment Works, was formed, and in 1778 the
Che
ŏ
n ch
ŏ
rmok,
or Comprehensive Plan for Embankment
Works, was promulgated to provide for the maintenance and repair of irrigation facilities throughout the country. In the meantime, many reservoirs for irrigation were developed. By the end of the eighteenth century almost 6,000 reservoirs existed. At the same time reclamation projects were actively undertaken along the west coast, considerably enlarging the farmlands.

As irrigation facilities expanded, the farming of rice fields developed. Dry fields were transformed into paddies on a vast scale, and the technique of transplanting rice seedlings became widespread. Rice transplantation made possible the double-cropping system, in which the paddies, before rice planting, could be used for the ripening winter barley crop, resulting in a marked increase in food grains. The technique of dry-field cultivation was also developed, in which fields were plowed so as to form an alternating pattern of ridges and furrows, with the seed being sown in the furrows at the same time.

As the development of agricultural techniques reduced labor requirements, the practice of
kwangjak,
or enlarged-scale farming, became prevalent, in which one farmer alone worked a good-sized area of land. These farmers emerged as agricultural entrepreneurs, capable of producing not only for their own consumption but also for the market. They also hired farm laborers. Indeed, most of the landless labor force in rural society became the hired hands of their wealthier neighbors or were driven elsewhere for employment. Some became mountain recluses living by slash-and-burn agricultural practices.

Since the early eighteenth century, the growing commercial production of specialized crops, particularly ginseng, tobacco, and cotton, transformed rural life. The cultivation of ginseng was popular in the Kaes
ŏ
ng area both as a product for the domestic market and for exporting to China and Japan. Tobacco, first introduced in the early seventeenth century from Japan, was also widely grown for domestic consumption as well as for exporting to China. The cultivation of cotton gradually increased for both market and home consumption, and vegetables were widely grown for subsistence in the increasingly populated suburban areas of Seoul.

The experiences of war had led farmers to recognize the need for hardy plants and for better general preparations in case of crop failures. Thus, new crops such as sweet potatoes, potatoes, tomatoes, squash, and red peppers were widely cultivated. Sweet potatoes were brought from Japan by Cho
Ŏ
m, who had been dispatched to Japan as Chos
ŏ
n’s envoy in 1764, and potatoes were introduced from China in 1824.

As large landholdings became widespread, a majority of peasant farmers were reduced to working the land as tenants, although at the same time a new class of commoner landlords emerged. In this period a tenant farmer who usually paid 50 percent of his harvest as rent could farm the leased land at his own discretion. Later, the tenant system developed to where rent for tenancy could be paid in cash rather than in kind.

In this later Chos
ŏ
n period a new phase developed in the handicraft industry. Production under government auspices gradually declined, and private industry took its place. The manufacture of weapons, paper, clothes, chinaware, silk, brassware, and mintage still remained government activities for some time, but even commodities in state demand such as these ultimately came under private management. By the end of the eighteenth century artisans and craftsmen of all kinds had become private producers independent of government control. The enactment of the Taedongp
ŏ
p was a prelude to the development of private industry. With the abolition of the tribute tax, merchants, called
kongin,
or tribute men, acted as purchasing agents, ordering craftsmen to supply the goods necessary to meet the government’s requirements.

In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, most craftsmen did not finance their own operations but mostly relied on capital provided by the merchants. Upon receiving an order from a merchant, the craftsman was given raw materials and advance payment for his labor. Called the
mulchu,
or financier, the merchant controlled the craftsman’s production. Some craftsmen, however, did produce goods with their own capital, selling them on their own or through the pack and back peddlers. For example, the makers of brassware who were concentrated at Ans
ŏ
ng, Ky
ŏ
nggi province, and Ch
ŏ
ngju, P’y
ŏ
ngan province, used their own capital to build workshops, procure raw materials, and employ labor, and then sold their output to merchants at markets that were set up.