대한제국기 김가진의 충주지역 토지 소유와 의의

Abstract

This study aims to examine the genealogy of Kim Ga-jin, who is recorded as a great landowner in ‘Chungju Land Register’, and his ownership of land in Chungju. His family was of Munchung-gong Family Andong Kim Clan as a faction of ‘Jangdong Kim’s family’. It was not one of the main powerful families that produced queens in those days, but as a noble family of Andong Kim Clan, his family constantly entered government service, while residing in the area of Jangdong as its single-lineage village. According to ‘Chungju Land Register’, Kim Ga-jin owned land as much as 17 gyeols, 2 bus and 1 sok. As a result of examining his land, this study discovered that he owned paddy fields about three times more than dry fields. When his land was classified by land class, Class 4 was most (41.4%), followed by Class 3 (29.9%) and Class 2 (23.3%). Since his land was concentrated on Class 2, 3 and 4, it shows that his land was quite good in soil fertility. Most of the land was borrowed by tenants, and as peasant proprietors, most of them had their own arable land, compared to ones in other areas. Particularly, he owned a great deal of land in geographically advantageous areas. The majority of his land was distributed along the course of South Han River. This area was advantageous to manage and maintain land through the water transport of South Han River, further resulting in commercializing the farmland easily. Geographically speaking, this area had so good farming environments that many politically powerful people tried to accumulate land there and even carried out landlord management by using the distribution network of South Han River. Kim Ga-jin’s ownership of land can be regarded as one of the cases.