Implicit Political and Economic Liberties in the Thought of Tasan Chŏng Yagyong

Two types of implicit liberty were the foremost features of the philosophy produced by Tasan Chŏng Yagyong (1762–1836), a Confucian scholar of the Chosŏn dynasty in Korea. The first was political liberty, which enabled people to select and dismiss their ruler. Tasan's notion of political liberty included a stern admonition to rulers and local officials, stipulating that if they collected unfair taxes from the people, the people had the right to take necessary actions to survive. The second was economic liberty, which enabled people to relocate to another village for financial reasons in the hamlet-field system. Under the well-field system, rulers distributed their farmland among the people equally for their personal use, and therefore they were not tenant farmers. Economic liberty was implicit and advocated that the people lead lives that were consistent with Confucian moral principles.