18세기 후반 正祖代 農政策의 전개

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to inquire into the executing of policy for agricultural development under the reign of King Jeong-jo in the late 18th century. In the late 18th century, King Jeong-jo moved forward with various policies that intended to develop agricultural productivity. One of these policies was encouragement of land-clearing for farming. King Jeong-jo succeeded to ancestors plan such as tax-free to clearing land for some years, awarding a prize to farmer promoted land clearing and so on. He regarded encouragement of land-clearing as one of the most important policy for agricultural development. So like other Kings of Chosun Dynasty, King Jeong-jo used to distributed calendar to both officer of central government and all local governor including the two upper classes of old Korea who lived in province. Anyway distribution of calendar was one of the policies for agricultural development. Because farmers in Korea should think calendar is matter of consequence, in order to cultivate crops appropriately. Now we brand calendar as a calendar of farming. Governors in Province named Do and magistrate of a county named Gunhyun had reported the state of cereals growth, and at the same time the amount of rainfall under their jurisdiction. We call these report as agricultural report and rainfall report. These reports used an principal evidence to judge good or bad forest of that year. Farmers had been suffered from natural disaster such as flood, drought. If there had been a calamity in any area, there were not proper tool of preventing from it. Then King Jeong-jo, central and local officers participated in praying to heaven stop of flood or draught. Being suffered from disaster, farmers seeded buckwheat in stead of rice. Because buckwheat needs more short days to grow than rice. After the late 18th century sweet potato was introduced to Korean farmers. Salvation from poor harvest was accepted as one of the main policies for agricultural development. The central government carried out tax cut, famine relief and so on, in order to restore poor people and revive starved people. Governors relieved to the poor people from many unfavorable situations. We could point distribution of HwanGok as a good method to relieve famine people. Sometimes King Jeong-jo accredited a royal secret inspector, who supervised the operation of salvation from poor harvest.