The Gwajeon Law
Yi Seong-gye and the new scholar-officials abolished the magnates’ estates and enacted the Gwajeon Law, granting officials rent rights to land in Gyeonggi only.
Jo Jun and others repeatedly urged land reform, and in 1390 the old public and private land registers were burned in the streets of Gaegyeong. Promulgated in the fifth month of 1391, the law graded serving and former officials into 18 ranks and granted them rent rights over land in Gyeonggi. Inheritance was banned in principle, but widows and orphans received sustenance land. The rent taken from farmers was fixed at one tenth of the harvest.
The law destroyed the magnates’ economic base and gave the new scholar-officials theirs, becoming the economic foundation of Joseon’s bureaucratic yangban society.
