1014 EPILOGUEYu agreed with the most progressive Korean officials of his time that market
development should be encouraged, certainly as a means of reforming the cor-
rupted tribute system. He admired Cho Han's reports of the more advanced Ming
economy, but he did not intend to move as far as the Chinese had by allowing
sons of merchants to take the examinations. Since he included land allotments
for merchants in his ideal land distribution scheme, it is obvious that he expected
commercial activity only to supplement basic income from farming, not replace
it. His economic vision was quite a bit behind late Ming economic developments,
not to mention earlier dynasties.
Nonetheless, it was his fear of the adverse consequences of inflation because
of mistakes in the management of currency in past Chinese dynasties that makes
him look quite conservative. To be sure, many economists in favor of sound money
and stability in the twentieth century fear the adverse consequences of infla-
tionary policies. but this concern for stability does not interfere with their pro-
gressive perspective on the capacity of a healthy capitalist economy to expand
steadily. Yu, however, was witnessing thc beginnings of a cash economy when
the mistrust of the value of that cash was powerful. The slightest symptom of
inflation was liable to destroy confidence in the cash and destroy the whole exper-
iment. For that reason he felt that the only secure way to use cash was to limit
its type to the penny cash, where the face value was only slightly more than the
intrinsic worth of the metal.
A money system based exclusively on copper pennies was by itself a brake
on the potential for expanding the economy. He favored it because his economic
concepts were tied closely to moral rather than utilitarian objectives. Nickles,
dimes, and quarters, let alone dollar bills, were not only sure guarantees of infla-
tion, they were also evil seeds that would burgeon into moral decay by stimu-
lating greed and avarice, destroying frugality, and leading the peasants to
abandon their fields in search of easy profit.
In short, Yu's economic thought was progressive by comparison with the rel-
atively backward situation of Korea in the sixteenth century, but quite limited
with respect to developments in Ming China or Tokugawa Japan, let alone the
West.
EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY DEVELOPMENTS
Institutional Changes
There were four major institutional changes in the eighteenth century about
which Yu Hyongwan had something to say: slavery, military service, land, and
the economy. The reform of the slave system was probably the most signifi-
cant of any reform in the dynasty. The matrilineal succession rule was adopted
permanently in 1730, official slaves were abolished in 1801, and the percent-
age of private slaves in the population dropped below 10 percent after 1780,
but the abolition of hereditary slavery and of slavery altogether did not occur