Land Reform in the Realization of a Confucian Ideal: The Debate among Neo-Confucian Scholars in the Mid-Chosŏn Period

The so-called “well-field system” (chŏngjŏnje 井田制), a field allotment and taxation method based on the operation of nine identical plots, long functioned as the dominant land system of East Asia and was admired by Mencius and Zhu Xi 朱熹. However, in the mid-Chosŏn 朝鮮 period, Han Paekkyŏm 韓百謙, a Neo- Confucian scholar, surveyed farmland on the outskirts of the walled city of P’yŏngyang 平壤 and contended that the land system there, allegedly established by the ruler Kija 箕子 of the Shang 商 dynasty, differed from the original wellfield system of the Zhou 周 dynasty. He explained that the site in P’yŏngyang was in the shape chŏn 田, not the chŏng 井 pattern of Zhou. Han maintained that the government should institute land reform based on a rearrangement of how land was partitioned. Critics of Han, however, argued that not all the arable land around P’yŏngyang was composed of chŏn-shaped plots and claimed that land reform would not be a realistic solution but rather a burden to the people. Han’s idea was significant in that it triggered a debate on land reform. As a result, many scholars called for the adoption of a 10% tax rate aimed at stabilizing the people’s welfare. The well-field debate is a true reminder that Chosŏn scholars believed that a successful land system was a precondition for realizing benevolent governance based on Confucian and Mencian thought.