112 EARLY CHOSON DYNASTYsidiary income just when it was becoming impossible to do so because the state
was using cotton production to increase its taxes on land. Thus, Korea was unable
to transform cotton from subsistence use to a marketable commodity as had
occurred in China and Japan, but it did collect bolts of cotton cloth from sup-
port taxpayers to finance soldiers in the military.
In the eighteenth century, household and individual cloth taxes on ordinary
households and military support taxpayers were levied illicitly on deceased indi-
viduals as well (the "white bones cloth levy" exactions, or paekkol chingp'o).
The net result of the overtaxation of cotton cloth had so depleted the supply of
cotton textiles that by 1866 the price of one p 'if of cotton had reached the level
of 50-60 mal (3.3-4.0 sam) of rice.
For that matter government policy toward cotton since King Injo's reign in
the 1620S was based on dividing cotton from rice or grain cultivation so that
cotton production was relegated to the hilly areas of the country. Since it was
confined to the role of providing subsidiary income, it never could escape from
that restraint and provide the motor force for industrial revolution as it had in
Western Europe since the time of the north Italian city states.^45
Expansion of Markets and Unlicensed Merchants
Trade expanded by the late fifteenth century as the tribute middlemen (kong'in)
began to function as tribute contractors (substitute payments or taenap of required
tribute).4^6 When the central government began to replace the tribute system by
the taedong reform, which legalized the state's purchase of goods directly from
merchants, it stimulated greater commercial activity, a process that will be
explored in detail in chapter 21.
Some time around 1637 the six licensed shops in the capital that supplied the
greatest amount of goods to the state - anywhere from 70 to 100 percent of state
demands for goods - were dubbed "the six shops" (yug'uijan). The six shops
(at times expanded to seven or eight), emerged in response to tribute demands
from the Manchus after the second Manchu invasion. They had the largest cap-
ital and handled general commercial goods, cotton and silver, silks, paper, ramie
and cotton cloth, and fish, but specialized primarily in cotton, silk, and ramie
textiles. Each of the six had about seventy employees. They also had the great-
est responsibilities for meeting state needs, in return for which the state guar-
anteed them a monopoly over sales of their goods and the right to close down
any nonlicensed shops that competed with them.
About the same time that the six shops were organized in the early seven-
teenth century, the peddlers (pobusang) were forming a kind of guild organi-
zation to afford them the advantages of mutual aid and protection against external
pressures. As a result of their noble action in supplying the king with food when
he was besieged in the Namhan Mountain fort by the Manchu invading force in
1637, the king granted the peddler guild monopoly sale rights over fish, salt,
wooden goods, earthenware, and ironware.^47