Agriculture
The vast majority of people worked in agriculture and thus were the essential backbone of Samguk era society. Similar to the method of taxation in the Han empire, the taxes levied on the peasantry in the Korean kingdoms were often in the form of a grain and cloth tax. Having a fairly high yield per harvest in comparison to other grains, rice served as a major tax crop and thus peasants and governments were highly invested in developing the land, infrastructure, and methodology for its cultivation. Although domestication of livestock, fishing, and hunting also contributed to food production, agriculture was the primary means of providing for the state.
As in the Chinese empire, iron was used fairly early in the Korean regions compared to the rest of the world. Sophisticated iron tools indicate that the three kingdoms had well-developed agricultural economies that more or less equaled that of neighboring China in terms of technology. Government administrations organized several large-scale construction projects involving hundreds to thousands of conscripted peasant laborers in order to irrigate fields and construct reservoirs for rice production. Several of these ancient reservoirs and irrigation structures continue to exist today and can still be seen in the Korean countryside. Similar to the way in which pre-industrial European farmers would leave their fields fallow after harvest as a way to prevent or lessen soil exhaustion, rice cultivators in the Korean peninsula left their fields idle for some time. However, with the usage of irrigation and reservoirs, the time needed to leave lands fallow was reduced, thus increasing agricultural productivity.
Peasant Life
The lot of a peasant's life has never been easy, even though the ruling classes and intellectuals have always viewed them as a valuable asset and the backbone of society as a whole. Peasants were the overwhelming majority of inhabitants; while there were several cities, city-dwellers constituted merely a tiny fraction of the total populace. Rural villagers for the most part were common peasants who tilled their own plots.
Peasants not only provided food and a tax base for a kingdom, but also were the primary source for laborers. Whenever local administrations or the royal governments at the capital initiated major construction projects, peasants were always conscripted as corvee laborers. All able-bodied adult males were obligated to pay this sort of "labor tax" when the need arose. Fortresses, reservoirs, irrigation infrastructure, royal tombs, palaces, and major constructions were all built by thousands of peasant hands. Free peasants were not allowed to bear arms, even in wartime situations. In the event of war, peasants were conscripted only to transport military supplies.
A common phenomena that occurred in pre-industrial Korea (as well as in China, Vietnam, and Japan) were the transformation of peasants into "tenant farmers." When peasants are unable to produce enough to sustain themselves, they may be forced to give up their lands and become "tenants" by "renting" plots of fields on gentry-owned estates. Gentry families were often exploitive, sometimes charging their tenants exorbitant rents or arbitrarily evicting them. The gap between rich and poor was enormous and though government officials sometimes sought some forms of protections for the peasantry, peasants were very often either at the mercy of the elements or the whims of their landlords. One advantage that tenants did have over independent farmers, however, was that the taxes levied upon them were not as burdensome. At times, some kingdoms did release surpluses to peasants in times of famines, but only as loans to be repaid at later harvest seasons.
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