PART VI CONCLUSION 1001ernment never did adopt his plan for state-controlled oligopoly. By the end of
the eighteenth century the state was content to act as referee between licensed
monopolies and private merchants without stepping forward to lead the way
toward rapid economic development.
One doubts that traditional attitudes toward agriculture and commerce would
have blocked all economic progress by itself because interesting changes had
already occurred. Nevertheless, despite the achievement of private merchants,
wholesalers, and artisans in breaking loose from the narrow framework oflicensed
production and commerce of the early Choson period, the capitalist class was
extremely limited in size, and the industrial proletariat hardly existed at all, since
most manufacture was limited to small-scale handicraft production.
The government seemed incapable of taking a leadership role in expanding
the economy. While it agreed to mint more cash, it limited it to penny cash
alone, restricted mining activities, took no steps to improve domestic trans-
portation, maintained certain monopolies primarily to ensure a flow of former
tribute goods, and kept foreign trade within the narrow confines of tribute rela-
tions with China and extremely limited restrictions with Japan. In fact, when
foreign traders and missionaries showed up at Korean gates in the nineteenth
century after the Opium War, they were regarded by Korean officials as the har-
bingers of national destruction.