A peasant revolt that began in Danseong and Jinju in Gyeongsang Province in 1862 (the 13th year of King Cheoljong) and spread across the three southern provinces, Jeju, Hamheung, Gwangju, and about 70 other counties nationwide. The main cause was the corruption of the three state taxes (samjeong). T
Start~End Mar 4, 1862 ~ Feb 1863Last edited Oct 15, 2026, 2:46 PM
Details
Start ~ End
Mar 4, 1862 ~ Feb 1863
Date
1862
Location
Joseon kingdom across the Hasamdo region and parts of central and northern regions
Result
Peasant forces dispersed on their own; establishment of the Samjeongijeongcheong
The Imsul Peasant Uprising (壬戌農民蜂起) or Imsul Rebellion (壬戌民亂) was a series of peasant uprisings that broke out simultaneously in various parts of Joseon in 1862. At that time, Joseon had remained for several centuries since the Imjin War without resolving the systemic contradictions that had deepened during that period. In this process, the corruption of the tax system and the abuses of the ruling class were carried out. The livelihood of the subjugated peasant class grew harder, and their discontent accumulated.
Beginning with the Danseong Rebellion on March 4, 1862 (February 4 in the lunar calendar), the peasants' anger erupted in the Jinju Rebellion on March 14 (February 14 in the lunar calendar) and swept over the three southern provinces (Gyeongsang, Jeolla, and Chungcheong) and parts of the central and northern regions (Gwangju, Hamheung, and others) for more than three months. The radicalized peasants attacked government offices, destroyed the eastern pavilions (donghon), and insulted magistrates. They killed clerks and local strongmen who embezzled and shifted taxes, and burned their houses. Alarmed, the Andong Kim regime established the Samjeongijeongcheong to discuss measures to improve the corruption of the three state taxes. It also dispatched Ahaeksa and Wimusa officials to the areas where rebellions had occurred to calm the peasants, while executing the ringleaders.
By the end of 1862, the rebellions across the country had almost subsided, and the peasants dispersed on their own. Although the Imsul Rebellion was a major event that exploded the anger of the subjugated classes, in reality it consisted of small uprisings that occurred independently in each region. For this reason, it lacked organizational strength, and due to the limitations of the era, the peasants lacked class consciousness and failed to secure their demands. The Imsul Rebellion was evidence that the Joseon yangban system had reached its limits, and it was succeeded by large-scale peasant struggles such as the Donghak Peasant Revolution.
Background
Since the late Joseon period, the Joseon dynasty had been undergoing change due to increased production from the development of farming techniques and the growth of commerce and industry. Yangban landowners and wealthy farmers accumulated wealth by securing large amounts of farmland, while poor peasants fell into tenant farming or wage labor, and the gap between rich and poor deepened. Furthermore, the existing yangban system was gradually collapsing due to changes in the economic environment and the disorder of the status order.
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Joseon, which relied on a natural economy centered on agriculture as its fiscal foundation, depended heavily on peasants for much of its state revenue. Accordingly, as fiscal demands increased, the burden on peasants grew heavier. In particular, in the late Joseon period, the corruption of the three state taxes, the harsh exploitation by the ruling class, the political contradictions arising from the politics of royal in-law dominance, and the rapidly increasing expenditures after the opening of the country imposed double and triple burdens on peasants. Above all, the outrageous conduct of the clerks who came to collect taxes was severe. As a result, even a person who owned a four-room thatched house had to pay more than 100 gold in annual taxes, and a person who owned five or six majigi of land paid more than four seok in taxes. Therefore, the resentment toward the official class growing among the peasants inevitably led to peasant uprisings. This situation was also discussed at court, and in 1861 (the 12th year of King Cheoljong) the king ordered strict punishment of the misconduct of local officials. However, it was not implemented due to opposition from Chief State Councillor Jeong Won-yong.3
In 1862 (the Imsul year), the simultaneous rebellions that swept across half of Joseon were an incident in which rural intellectuals, centered on impoverished yangban, and the oppressed peasant class united amid the socioeconomic changes of the late Joseon period to resist the accumulated feudal exploitation and corrupt officials. At that time, the impoverishment of poor farmers was caused not only by excessive rents charged by landlords but also by various taxes, and during tax collection, corrupt officials and clerks engaged in widespread fraud.2
At that time, the tax system consisted of the three state taxes (samjeong): the jeongjeong, which required payment of the land tax (jeonse); the gunjeong, which required payment of the military tax (gunpo); and the hwanjeong, which collected interest on hwangok grain loans. During the reign of Cheoljong of Joseon, when the Imsul Rebellion occurred, all kinds of corruption were rampant, and none of these three functioned normally.2 Officials used all kinds of tricks to exploit the people, and as a result, the burden on the people grew heavier while the state treasury was depleted. The difference was embezzled by yangban officials and clerks. At that time, the government lacked the ability to resolve this systemic contradiction. King Cheoljong was incompetent, and the Andong Kim politically dominant regime disregarded the principles of state governance. Low-ranking officials obtained positions through bribery, and in order to recover the cost of those bribes and pay more bribes, they squeezed the people beyond the actual taxes.4
The jeongjeong had originally been established by law to conduct a land survey (yangjeon) every twenty years for fair assessment and collection, but at this time the land survey had not been carried out for a long time. For this reason, the productivity of land was not properly understood, and taxes were imposed unfairly. Hidden-fields, which had originally been excluded from taxation, were also widespread. Profiteers collected taxes from these hidden fields that were not supposed to be taxed, and then embezzled them instead of sending them to the state treasury.4 Yangban and landlords threatened the clerks and shifted their own land taxes onto commoners. In addition, dogyeol, the practice of adding various miscellaneous taxes to the land tax, was widespread.5
Regarding the gunjeong, the Gyunyeok Act was implemented during the reign of Yeongjo of Joseon, under which one bolt of military cloth (gunpo) was imposed on every adult male aged 16 to 60 subject to military service, which eased taxes, but it was only a stopgap measure. The military service subjects were not properly identified, and eventually the military cloth each county had to pay was designated under a quota system. Yangban evaded military service for various reasons, and as a result, the military tax was concentrated solely on the commoner class. Commoners also evaded military service by hiding in hyanggyo or seowon or by impersonating yangban. When people evaded military service, the burden was imposed on those who remained. Taxes were levied on people who had already died, known as baekgol jingpo, and taxes were imposed on non-combatant children, known as hwanggu cheomjeong. In addition, jeonnap, the payment of money instead of military cloth, expanded, and people were made to pay more than the actual value of the cloth, and the difference was embezzled.5 When holes appeared in the gunjeong, they were compensated by levying additional charges on the jeongjeong, known as gyeollyeom. Due to gyeollyeom, the abuses of the gunjeong led directly to abuses in the jeongjeong.6
Among the three state taxes, the hwanjeong was the most severely corrupted. Originally used as relief grain during famines, the hwangok in the late Joseon period was used to collect interest for local finances, magistrates' expenses, and the creation of funds. Therefore, even when peasants did not want it, grain was forcibly distributed to them with interest added, which they had to repay. The scale of hwangok expanded enormously, and all kinds of corruption arose. The abuses of hwangok were not just one or two. Abuses occurred when collecting and distributing hwangok, when exchanging hwangok for money and grain, when exchanging old grain for new grain, when clerks embezzled hwangok and falsely recorded it in ledgers, and when debtors died or fled and the debt was shifted to relatives and neighbors.6 The scale of embezzlement grew larger over time, and by the nineteenth century, when the Imsul Rebellion occurred, it reached thousands to tens of thousands of seok. As embezzlement became frequent, shortages of hwangok occurred precisely when famines struck. Such deficits were called pohum. To make up for pohum, peasants were exploited, and impurities such as stones and straw were mixed into the grain. Also, baekjing occurred, in which interest was collected on hwangok that had not even been lent. Since peasants could hardly be expected to repay grain they had never borrowed, this was added to the land tax, and this was called gagyeol.7
The corruption of the three state taxes deepened the disparity of wealth among the peasant class. Landlords and wealthy farmers monopolized land, while other peasants fell into the status of small-scale farmers, tenants, or, in severe cases, day laborers. The yangban class also underwent differentiation: some became hyangban who farmed like commoners, and others lost even their status as independent farmers and became day laborers. As the corruption of the three state taxes reached its extreme, taxes became concentrated on land through dogyeol and gagyeol, in which military and hwangok burdens were shifted onto the jeongjeong. Landlords evaded these taxes by shifting them onto tenant farmers. Unable to endure any longer, the peasants rose up in struggle against the exploitation of the feudal system.8
Thus, from the middle of the lunar second month of the following year, nationwide rebellions broke out, beginning with Jinju in Yeongnam. The immediate motive was the exploitation and persecution by Byeongsa (military commander) Baek Nak-sin. He committed embezzlement, chwiing (taking excessive interest on hwangok), extortion, neukjing (illegally collecting land taxes), and baeho baekjing (forced household-by-household tax collection), which drew popular resentment. Then, a yangban intellectual such as former Gyori (Instructor) Yi Myeong-yun stepped forward as one of the ringleaders, enlisted local clerks and leaders, and gathered even servants, woodcutters, and herd boys, giving them a certain degree of organization and training. They were then used as vanguard units that advanced from the outer villages into the town.3
Initial government response
Upon receiving this report, the court appointed Park Gyu-su as Ahaeksa on the 29th day of the second lunar month to restore order. However, once the peasants' anger and struggle had erupted, it did not stop at Jinju but spread widely throughout the three southern provinces. In the third lunar month, rebellions occurred in Iksan in Jeolla Province; in the fourth lunar month, in Gaeryeong in Gyeongsang Province and Hampyeong in Jeolla Province; and in the fifth lunar month, in Hoedeok, Gongju, Eunjin, Yeonsan, and Cheongju in Chungcheong Province; in Yeosan, Buan, Geumgu, Jangheung, and Suncheon in Jeolla Province; and in Danseong, Hamyang, Seongju, Seonsan, Sangju, Geochang, Ulsan, Gunwi, Bian, and Indong in Gyeongsang Province, uprisings continued. The court, led by Park Gyu-su, dispatched Ahaeksa, Seonmusa, and secret royal inspectors to the three southern provinces to restore order. It took a stance of executing the ringleaders of the rebellions with extreme punishment, while punishing corrupt officials and also pursuing fundamental corrective measures for the three state taxes.3
Accordingly, Park Gyu-su pointed out that the causes of the rebellions lay in the depletion of state finances and the impoverishment of the people's livelihoods. He described peasants' living conditions, noting that in the three southern provinces, for fewer than 100 households, more than 109,800 seok of grain were collected, which amounted to nearly 1,900 seok per household. As a corrective measure, he memorialized the king to abolish the hwangok system. The court accepted this and established the Iljeongcheong (Office for Rectification) to reform the three state taxes, and promulgated the Samjeong Irjeong Jeolmok (Regulations on the Rectification of the Three State Taxes).3
Its contents, regarding the jeongjeong and gunjeong, focused on correcting their abuses by taking public complaints into account. Regarding the hwanjeong, it listed 23 articles of remedial measures, including: ① fixing the total national hwangok quantity at 2,361,998 seok, always keeping 1.5 million seok in reserve grain; ② writing off two-thirds of the 2,816,916 seok of "virtual" hwangok (grain that existed only on paper), while requiring that the remaining one-third, which was clearly embezzled by officials and clerks, be repaid in principal over ten years, and that anyone who had embezzled more than 1,000 seok be recorded in a register, investigated, and punished; and ③ determining the actual number of cultivated units nationwide and having 2 gyeol per gyeol paid according to the existing practice of gyeoljeon (grain-equivalent land payments). These were emergency measures.3
Recurrence of rebellions
As the fierce rebellions in each region subsided to some extent, the drought and floods of that summer again unsettled the people's minds, and from the eighth lunar month onward, rebellions spread nationwide once more. In the ninth lunar month, tens of thousands of peasants rose up on Jeju Island; in the tenth lunar month, rebellions broke out in Hamheung in Hamgyeong Province; in the eleventh lunar month, in Gwangju in Gyeonggi Province; and in the twelfth lunar month, in Changwon in Gyeongsang Province, Namhae in Jeolla Province, and Hwangju in Hwanghae Province. The country remained in unrest until the end of the year. The following year, even soldiers of the Geumwiyeong (Forbidden Guard Camp) in the heart of Hanyang rose in disturbance, and stability seemed unlikely. However, King Cheoljong eventually died, incompetent as he was, and with him the politics of the royal in-law Andong Kim family collapsed, causing nationwide change, and the peasants' struggles again entered a lull. Yet less than twenty years later, the Imo Military Revolt (Imo Gunran) and the Donghak Rebellion, which occurred under Min family dominance, were directly related to these rebellions, and Joseon itself accelerated its own process of collapse.3
Evaluation
Yet the question of why the rebellions occurred mainly in the three southern provinces, and why they erupted during the reign of Cheoljong, even though fiscal corruption and official misconduct had existed for a long time, is an important task in dealing with the rebellion problem. With the implementation of the Daedong Act, the ruling class, which had been able to accumulate wealth without limit through bang-nap (the practice of contracting tribute goods through intermediaries), could no longer avoid unrest, and on this occasion the peasant class, which had come to enjoy legal protection, gradually developed both economic self-awareness and the strength to fight against authority.3
Meanwhile, because the fertile three southern provinces suffered greater damage from exploitation than any other region, the peasants' level of consciousness also rose. Rather than the passive methods of earlier times, by which they had sought tax exemption and labor exemption by colluding with low-ranking officials, they adopted bold methods of trying to rise in status to the yangban class and belong to the same class as the ruling class. Thus, by the time of King Sukjong, this brought about changes in status, and these people exercised power no different from the traditional yangban, so that the burden on the remaining peasants increased even further.3
Therefore, while the damage to ordinary peasants intensified, on the other hand the consciousness of the peasantry grew. During harsh suffering, their resentment and will to struggle were stirred, and finally in the reign of Cheoljong this exploded into rebellion. In every respect, this signified the process of collapse of the rigid class system and economic feudalism, and became a driving force toward modern society.3
Jeju Rebellion - 13th day of the 9th month, 6th day of the 10th month, 15th day of the 11th month
References
This article includes content based on articles distributed under the GFDL or CC-SA license by Daum Communications (now Kakao) in the Global World Encyclopedia.
Ko Seong-hun; Yi Sang-tae; Ko Hye-ryeong; Kim Yong-gon; Lee Young-chun; Kim Hyeon-yeong; Park Han-nam; Yu Ju-hui. "The Fever of Rebellions Sweeping the Nation: The Imsul Rebellion." The Era of Rebellions. Mapo-gu, Seoul: Garam Planning. ISBN 8984350281.
Notes
Footnotes
Ko Seong-hun et al., eds. by 8 members of the National Institute of Korean History, The Era of Rebellions, chapter by Kim Yong-gon, "The Fever of Rebellions Sweeping the Nation: The Imsul Rebellion," p. 179 ↩
This article includes content based on the "Donghak Revolution" entry distributed under the GFDL or CC-SA license by Daum Communications (now Kakao) in the Global World Encyclopedia. ↩↩2↩3↩4↩5↩6↩7↩8↩9
The Imsul Peasant Uprising (壬戌農民蜂起) or Imsul Rebellion (壬戌民亂) was a series of peasant uprisings that broke out simultaneously in various parts of Joseon in 1862. At that time, Joseon had remained for several centuries since the Imjin War without resolving the systemic contradictions that had deepened during that period. In this process, the corruption of the tax system and the abuses of the ruling class were carried out. The livelihood of the subjugated peasant class grew harder, and their discontent accumulated.
Beginning with the Danseong Rebellion on March 4, 1862 (February 4 in the lunar calendar), the peasants' anger erupted in the Jinju Rebellion on March 14 (February 14 in the lunar calendar) and swept over the three southern provinces (Gyeongsang, Jeolla, and Chungcheong) and parts of the central and northern regions (Gwangju, Hamheung, and others) for more than three months. The radicalized peasants attacked government offices, destroyed the eastern pavilions (donghon), and insulted magistrates. They killed clerks and local strongmen who embezzled and shifted taxes, and burned their houses. Alarmed, the Andong Kim regime established the Samjeongijeongcheong to discuss measures to improve the corruption of the three state taxes. It also dispatched Ahaeksa and Wimusa officials to the areas where rebellions had occurred to calm the peasants, while executing the ringleaders.
By the end of 1862, the rebellions across the country had almost subsided, and the peasants dispersed on their own. Although the Imsul Rebellion was a major event that exploded the anger of the subjugated classes, in reality it consisted of small uprisings that occurred independently in each region. For this reason, it lacked organizational strength, and due to the limitations of the era, the peasants lacked class consciousness and failed to secure their demands. The Imsul Rebellion was evidence that the Joseon yangban system had reached its limits, and it was succeeded by large-scale peasant struggles such as the Donghak Peasant Revolution.
Background
Since the late Joseon period, the Joseon dynasty had been undergoing change due to increased production from the development of farming techniques and the growth of commerce and industry. Yangban landowners and wealthy farmers accumulated wealth by securing large amounts of farmland, while poor peasants fell into tenant farming or wage labor, and the gap between rich and poor deepened.1 Furthermore, the existing yangban system was gradually collapsing due to changes in the economic environment and the disorder of the status order.2
Joseon, which relied on a natural economy centered on agriculture as its fiscal foundation, depended heavily on peasants for much of its state revenue. Accordingly, as fiscal demands increased, the burden on peasants grew heavier. In particular, in the late Joseon period, the corruption of the three state taxes, the harsh exploitation by the ruling class, the political contradictions arising from the politics of royal in-law dominance, and the rapidly increasing expenditures after the opening of the country imposed double and triple burdens on peasants. Above all, the outrageous conduct of the clerks who came to collect taxes was severe. As a result, even a person who owned a four-room thatched house had to pay more than 100 gold in annual taxes, and a person who owned five or six majigi of land paid more than four seok in taxes. Therefore, the resentment toward the official class growing among the peasants inevitably led to peasant uprisings. This situation was also discussed at court, and in 1861 (the 12th year of King Cheoljong) the king ordered strict punishment of the misconduct of local officials. However, it was not implemented due to opposition from Chief State Councillor Jeong Won-yong.3
In 1862 (the Imsul year), the simultaneous rebellions that swept across half of Joseon were an incident in which rural intellectuals, centered on impoverished yangban, and the oppressed peasant class united amid the socioeconomic changes of the late Joseon period to resist the accumulated feudal exploitation and corrupt officials. At that time, the impoverishment of poor farmers was caused not only by excessive rents charged by landlords but also by various taxes, and during tax collection, corrupt officials and clerks engaged in widespread fraud.2
At that time, the tax system consisted of the three state taxes (samjeong): the jeongjeong, which required payment of the land tax (jeonse); the gunjeong, which required payment of the military tax (gunpo); and the hwanjeong, which collected interest on hwangok grain loans. During the reign of Cheoljong of Joseon, when the Imsul Rebellion occurred, all kinds of corruption were rampant, and none of these three functioned normally.2 Officials used all kinds of tricks to exploit the people, and as a result, the burden on the people grew heavier while the state treasury was depleted. The difference was embezzled by yangban officials and clerks. At that time, the government lacked the ability to resolve this systemic contradiction. King Cheoljong was incompetent, and the Andong Kim politically dominant regime disregarded the principles of state governance. Low-ranking officials obtained positions through bribery, and in order to recover the cost of those bribes and pay more bribes, they squeezed the people beyond the actual taxes.4
The jeongjeong had originally been established by law to conduct a land survey (yangjeon) every twenty years for fair assessment and collection, but at this time the land survey had not been carried out for a long time. For this reason, the productivity of land was not properly understood, and taxes were imposed unfairly. Hidden-fields, which had originally been excluded from taxation, were also widespread. Profiteers collected taxes from these hidden fields that were not supposed to be taxed, and then embezzled them instead of sending them to the state treasury.4 Yangban and landlords threatened the clerks and shifted their own land taxes onto commoners. In addition, dogyeol, the practice of adding various miscellaneous taxes to the land tax, was widespread.5
Regarding the gunjeong, the Gyunyeok Act was implemented during the reign of Yeongjo of Joseon, under which one bolt of military cloth (gunpo) was imposed on every adult male aged 16 to 60 subject to military service, which eased taxes, but it was only a stopgap measure. The military service subjects were not properly identified, and eventually the military cloth each county had to pay was designated under a quota system. Yangban evaded military service for various reasons, and as a result, the military tax was concentrated solely on the commoner class. Commoners also evaded military service by hiding in hyanggyo or seowon or by impersonating yangban. When people evaded military service, the burden was imposed on those who remained. Taxes were levied on people who had already died, known as baekgol jingpo, and taxes were imposed on non-combatant children, known as hwanggu cheomjeong. In addition, jeonnap, the payment of money instead of military cloth, expanded, and people were made to pay more than the actual value of the cloth, and the difference was embezzled.5 When holes appeared in the gunjeong, they were compensated by levying additional charges on the jeongjeong, known as gyeollyeom. Due to gyeollyeom, the abuses of the gunjeong led directly to abuses in the jeongjeong.6
Among the three state taxes, the hwanjeong was the most severely corrupted. Originally used as relief grain during famines, the hwangok in the late Joseon period was used to collect interest for local finances, magistrates' expenses, and the creation of funds. Therefore, even when peasants did not want it, grain was forcibly distributed to them with interest added, which they had to repay. The scale of hwangok expanded enormously, and all kinds of corruption arose. The abuses of hwangok were not just one or two. Abuses occurred when collecting and distributing hwangok, when exchanging hwangok for money and grain, when exchanging old grain for new grain, when clerks embezzled hwangok and falsely recorded it in ledgers, and when debtors died or fled and the debt was shifted to relatives and neighbors.6 The scale of embezzlement grew larger over time, and by the nineteenth century, when the Imsul Rebellion occurred, it reached thousands to tens of thousands of seok. As embezzlement became frequent, shortages of hwangok occurred precisely when famines struck. Such deficits were called pohum. To make up for pohum, peasants were exploited, and impurities such as stones and straw were mixed into the grain. Also, baekjing occurred, in which interest was collected on hwangok that had not even been lent. Since peasants could hardly be expected to repay grain they had never borrowed, this was added to the land tax, and this was called gagyeol.7
The corruption of the three state taxes deepened the disparity of wealth among the peasant class. Landlords and wealthy farmers monopolized land, while other peasants fell into the status of small-scale farmers, tenants, or, in severe cases, day laborers. The yangban class also underwent differentiation: some became hyangban who farmed like commoners, and others lost even their status as independent farmers and became day laborers. As the corruption of the three state taxes reached its extreme, taxes became concentrated on land through dogyeol and gagyeol, in which military and hwangok burdens were shifted onto the jeongjeong. Landlords evaded these taxes by shifting them onto tenant farmers. Unable to endure any longer, the peasants rose up in struggle against the exploitation of the feudal system.8
Thus, from the middle of the lunar second month of the following year, nationwide rebellions broke out, beginning with Jinju in Yeongnam. The immediate motive was the exploitation and persecution by Byeongsa (military commander) Baek Nak-sin. He committed embezzlement, chwiing (taking excessive interest on hwangok), extortion, neukjing (illegally collecting land taxes), and baeho baekjing (forced household-by-household tax collection), which drew popular resentment. Then, a yangban intellectual such as former Gyori (Instructor) Yi Myeong-yun stepped forward as one of the ringleaders, enlisted local clerks and leaders, and gathered even servants, woodcutters, and herd boys, giving them a certain degree of organization and training. They were then used as vanguard units that advanced from the outer villages into the town.3
Initial government response
Upon receiving this report, the court appointed Park Gyu-su as Ahaeksa on the 29th day of the second lunar month to restore order. However, once the peasants' anger and struggle had erupted, it did not stop at Jinju but spread widely throughout the three southern provinces. In the third lunar month, rebellions occurred in Iksan in Jeolla Province; in the fourth lunar month, in Gaeryeong in Gyeongsang Province and Hampyeong in Jeolla Province; and in the fifth lunar month, in Hoedeok, Gongju, Eunjin, Yeonsan, and Cheongju in Chungcheong Province; in Yeosan, Buan, Geumgu, Jangheung, and Suncheon in Jeolla Province; and in Danseong, Hamyang, Seongju, Seonsan, Sangju, Geochang, Ulsan, Gunwi, Bian, and Indong in Gyeongsang Province, uprisings continued. The court, led by Park Gyu-su, dispatched Ahaeksa, Seonmusa, and secret royal inspectors to the three southern provinces to restore order. It took a stance of executing the ringleaders of the rebellions with extreme punishment, while punishing corrupt officials and also pursuing fundamental corrective measures for the three state taxes.3
Accordingly, Park Gyu-su pointed out that the causes of the rebellions lay in the depletion of state finances and the impoverishment of the people's livelihoods. He described peasants' living conditions, noting that in the three southern provinces, for fewer than 100 households, more than 109,800 seok of grain were collected, which amounted to nearly 1,900 seok per household. As a corrective measure, he memorialized the king to abolish the hwangok system. The court accepted this and established the Iljeongcheong (Office for Rectification) to reform the three state taxes, and promulgated the Samjeong Irjeong Jeolmok (Regulations on the Rectification of the Three State Taxes).3
Its contents, regarding the jeongjeong and gunjeong, focused on correcting their abuses by taking public complaints into account. Regarding the hwanjeong, it listed 23 articles of remedial measures, including: ① fixing the total national hwangok quantity at 2,361,998 seok, always keeping 1.5 million seok in reserve grain; ② writing off two-thirds of the 2,816,916 seok of "virtual" hwangok (grain that existed only on paper), while requiring that the remaining one-third, which was clearly embezzled by officials and clerks, be repaid in principal over ten years, and that anyone who had embezzled more than 1,000 seok be recorded in a register, investigated, and punished; and ③ determining the actual number of cultivated units nationwide and having 2 gyeol per gyeol paid according to the existing practice of gyeoljeon (grain-equivalent land payments). These were emergency measures.3
Recurrence of rebellions
As the fierce rebellions in each region subsided to some extent, the drought and floods of that summer again unsettled the people's minds, and from the eighth lunar month onward, rebellions spread nationwide once more. In the ninth lunar month, tens of thousands of peasants rose up on Jeju Island; in the tenth lunar month, rebellions broke out in Hamheung in Hamgyeong Province; in the eleventh lunar month, in Gwangju in Gyeonggi Province; and in the twelfth lunar month, in Changwon in Gyeongsang Province, Namhae in Jeolla Province, and Hwangju in Hwanghae Province. The country remained in unrest until the end of the year. The following year, even soldiers of the Geumwiyeong (Forbidden Guard Camp) in the heart of Hanyang rose in disturbance, and stability seemed unlikely. However, King Cheoljong eventually died, incompetent as he was, and with him the politics of the royal in-law Andong Kim family collapsed, causing nationwide change, and the peasants' struggles again entered a lull. Yet less than twenty years later, the Imo Military Revolt (Imo Gunran) and the Donghak Rebellion, which occurred under Min family dominance, were directly related to these rebellions, and Joseon itself accelerated its own process of collapse.3
Evaluation
Yet the question of why the rebellions occurred mainly in the three southern provinces, and why they erupted during the reign of Cheoljong, even though fiscal corruption and official misconduct had existed for a long time, is an important task in dealing with the rebellion problem. With the implementation of the Daedong Act, the ruling class, which had been able to accumulate wealth without limit through bang-nap (the practice of contracting tribute goods through intermediaries), could no longer avoid unrest, and on this occasion the peasant class, which had come to enjoy legal protection, gradually developed both economic self-awareness and the strength to fight against authority.3
Meanwhile, because the fertile three southern provinces suffered greater damage from exploitation than any other region, the peasants' level of consciousness also rose. Rather than the passive methods of earlier times, by which they had sought tax exemption and labor exemption by colluding with low-ranking officials, they adopted bold methods of trying to rise in status to the yangban class and belong to the same class as the ruling class. Thus, by the time of King Sukjong, this brought about changes in status, and these people exercised power no different from the traditional yangban, so that the burden on the remaining peasants increased even further.3
Therefore, while the damage to ordinary peasants intensified, on the other hand the consciousness of the peasantry grew. During harsh suffering, their resentment and will to struggle were stirred, and finally in the reign of Cheoljong this exploded into rebellion. In every respect, this signified the process of collapse of the rigid class system and economic feudalism, and became a driving force toward modern society.3
Jeju Rebellion - 13th day of the 9th month, 6th day of the 10th month, 15th day of the 11th month
References
This article includes content based on articles distributed under the GFDL or CC-SA license by Daum Communications (now Kakao) in the Global World Encyclopedia.
Ko Seong-hun; Yi Sang-tae; Ko Hye-ryeong; Kim Yong-gon; Lee Young-chun; Kim Hyeon-yeong; Park Han-nam; Yu Ju-hui. "The Fever of Rebellions Sweeping the Nation: The Imsul Rebellion." The Era of Rebellions. Mapo-gu, Seoul: Garam Planning. ISBN 8984350281.
Notes
Footnotes
Ko Seong-hun et al., eds. by 8 members of the National Institute of Korean History, The Era of Rebellions, chapter by Kim Yong-gon, "The Fever of Rebellions Sweeping the Nation: The Imsul Rebellion," p. 179 ↩
This article includes content based on the "Donghak Revolution" entry distributed under the GFDL or CC-SA license by Daum Communications (now Kakao) in the Global World Encyclopedia. ↩↩2↩3↩4↩5↩6↩7↩8↩9