lOIS EPILOGUEearly I 990S, except that industrial factory production had no place in Korea at
that time. In addition to the licensed monopoly shops of the capital and slave
and commoner artisans of the government, there were private artisans and mer-
chants. Wholesale merchants cornered the market in goods like rice and fish, or
put out raw materials to peasant cotton spinners and weavers, official artisans
supplemented their income by using their spare time to produce goods for the
private market, and rotating duty soldiers in the capital entered into the hat and
glove trade to compete with licensed shops. The competitors with licensed
monopolies did not always challenge the system of monopoly in favor of a com-
pletely free market; many demanded membership in the ranks of the privileged
monopolists themselves.
Yu Suwon in the 1720S did argue for more organization by the government
of the small-scale merchants to form oligopolies that would reduce the evils of
the untrammeled pursuit of profit while maintaining competition to engender
efficiency and cheaper prices. His Confucian perspective did not prevent him
from considering positive aspects of commercial organization beyond the frame-
work of licensed monopoly. Pak Chega and Pak Chiwon also urged increased
international trade because they admired its greater development in China, where
it was not deemed un-Confucian. Nonetheless, almost all agreed that commerce
and industry would still remain subordinate to agriculture.
In any case, the armchair scholars were not the architects of government pol-
icy on the economy. Instead, the government mediated the dispute by a com-
promise between the licensed and unlicensed merchants and artisans that
divided the market between them. This solution apparently was acceptable to
most, and the economy neither reverted to restricted monopoly nor advanced
much toward industrial capitalism until sometime after the introduction of for-
eign trade in the 1880s. Korean Confucian thought could easily have tolerated
greater commercial activity than what existed in Korea, but the stimuli to greater
production and trade were lacking in the economy.
Commercial agriculture did not receive a big boost until the export of grain
to Japan in the 1880s, and a serious start to industrial capitalism did not occur
until the cessation of the ban on privatc business by the Japancse colonial regime
after 1919. Contrary to much scholarly opinion, by the end of the dynasty the
commercial and industrial economy did not really transform the agrarian, agri-
cultural economy.
Statecraft Scholarship and the Late Chason Dynasty
Recent scholarship on the late Choson period has distorted an understanding of
some of the fundamental aspects of that society because of its search for proof
to demonstrate the capacity of the Korean people to achieve change and progress
on their own initiative. That body of scholarship has been successful in demon-
strating some of the major changes that did take place, such as the growth of
the nonagricultural commercial sector, the decline of slavery, and the shifts in