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278 book VI kinds of taxes and services are attached to land, and the lands owned by the royal families and the military are all exempted from taxes, only 3,000 kyŏl of land out of 10,000 throughout a district are subject to taxes and service requirements. The burdens that the common people have to bear are so extreme and unfair that people never cease abandoning their lands. This is certainly not a problem that a district magistrate alone can rectify. That is why everyone says, “Land administration is beyond any help.” Treatise on Military Colony [Tunjŏnŭi] stated: “The military colony in the past was useful to the country because it supplied provisions for the military; however, the military colony in our days has become a moth to the country because it only enriches certain individuals privately. Emperor Wu of the Han dynasty turned the abandoned lands in his Shanglinyuan imperial garden into a military colony , and Cao Cao made a military colony in the inland area of Xuchang, because in that way they could save the cost of transportation, producing provisions for the imperial army. Nowadays commanders of various military camps purchase fertile lands in distant regions in the name of a military colony and send sons of gentry by concubines or idle youths of wealthy families who have nothing to do at their homes to be the supervisors of their lands. They collect taxes from their tenants so ruthlessly that their private income amounts to from at least 1,000 to at most several thousand taels. Since the royal domain shrinks day after day and the national revenue also decreases, no moths could be worse than this. Even though what distinguished officials and wise councilors have been seriously worried about is on the memorials they have submitted, and all kinds of good words and policies are piled in the office, the number of military colonies increases year after year so precipitously that it has become ten times what it was a hundred years ago. This is not the kind of situation that a magistrate in one district can handle. All he can do under the circumstances, therefore, is to maintain a certain limit so that things may not deteriorate extremely.” CHAPTER : LAW OF TAXATION I Since the Land System Is Already Problematic, the Law of Taxation Is Also in Disarray . Since the National Revenue Suffers Loss through the Annual Tax Rate [Yŏnbun], as Well as the Collection of Yellow Beans, the Total Amount of Collected Taxes Turns Out to Be Insignificant. 37. This work is presumed to have been written by Tasan himself. 38. The rear garden of the Han imperial garden located in the west of Changan District, Shanxi Province. 39. A warlord and chancellor of the Eastern Han dynasty. He was one of the central figures of the Three Kingdoms period and posthumously titled Emperor Wu of Wei. 40. Taxes from dry lands were collected in yellow beans. Taxation 279 Since lands at the time of reassessment are graded into six categories according to quality, 1 kyŏl of first-grade land becomes 85 pu when its grade is lowered to the second, and 70 pu to the third, and so forth, until it hits the sixth, the lowest grade (Comprehensive National Code). As a result, 1 kyŏl of first-grade land and 1 kyŏl of sixth-grade land are alike in terms of productivity and the payment of taxes. To make the situation worse, the nine-grade system of annual taxes is added to the already-problematic six-grade system of annual taxes so that 4 tu are levied for a year graded as lower-lower [hahanyŏn], 6 tu for a year graded as lower-middle [hajungnyŏn], 8 tu for a year graded as lower-upper [hasangnyŏn], and 20 tu for a year graded as upper-upper [sangsangnyŏn], if the grade goes all the way up. This is the so-called law of taxation (Comprehensive National Code). These systems conflict with each other, and because they are confusing and chaotic , they provide no clues to the solution. Let us take an example from Naju. This district has 20,000 kyŏl of land graded as lower-lower and 10,000 kyŏl of land graded as lower-middle, for which a total of 180,000 tu of rice is collected, because 6 tu are to be collected for each kyŏl of land. Even...

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