MILITARY REORGANIZATION 521while the smallest district only had to furnish 1 musket, 4 kiin of gunpowder,
and 200 rounds every six months. The annual production quota financed by this
province was probably around 250 weapons. But the districts were not given
the responsibility for the actual manufacture of this material, just paying for it.
The funds were to be accumulated by a grain tax on land, and then when the
taedong system of substituting a grain surtax for the local products tribute tax
was adopted in the seventeenth century on a piecemeal basis, these revenues
were used to pay for the monthly district weapons quota. In Hyojong's reign,
the taedong system had not been extended to the whole country, so allocation
of grain from the tacdongmi or f{{cdong rice revenue to pay for weapons was
only applied to Ch"Lmgch'ong and Kyonggi provinces. Thus the quotas of guns,
gunpowder, and bullets were converted into grain price equivalents.
At first, district magistrates received allocations of grain from the taedong
rice revenues and then remitted them to the Weapons Bureau (Kun'gisi) as pay-
ment for the production of the material. Later, in King Sukchong's reign (r. 1674-
1720) the rice was shipped to the Sangp'yongch'ong (Ever-Normal Bureau),
which in turn paid the Weapons Bureau for muskets and the tribute middlemen
(kong' in) of the Samgun'mun (Three Armies Office) for the ammunition. In those
areas where the taedong rice tax was not collected, grain was collected as a
weapons tax in accordance with the material resources of the district overall. 54
It is hard to estimate the total number of muskets in use in the mid-1650s, but
in 1656 one decree called for the production of r ,600 muskets each for the gov-
ernor's and provincial military commanders' yamen in Kyongsang and Cholla
provinces - a total of 6,400 muskets for the two provinces - which does not sound
I ike a large number unless some troops were already equipped with weapons. If
the production quota per province was about 250 a year for six of the eight
provinces, one might expect annual production of 1.500 pieces, really not
enough to supply more than a fraction of the total force of infantry. Even this
number might be too large considering that production was frequently suspended
for lack of funds or to reduce lax burdens on the population during famine con-
ditions.
On the other hand, the demand for muskets may have been limited by King
Hyojong's own hesitancy about the superiority of firearms. When Yi Wan, com-
mander of the Royal Division, complained that the arnlCd forces were relying
too heavily on musketeers because a sudden rainstorm could drench the pow-
der supplies and silence the army's muskets, instead of demanding that all com-
manders make sure that the men keep their powder dry, or that more tarpaulins
be made to cover the powder, Hyojong ordered that the number of bowmen of
the Defense Command at Namhan be increased to half the force.^55
Even though the Ch' ing court asked directly for Korean musketeers to be sent
as reinforcements in the fighting against the Russians in 1654 and 1658, the
constant fear of discovery by the Manchu authorities also inhibited the production
of guns. Muskets were even kept locked up except for actual training sessions
in North Hamgyong Province in the northeast. furthermore, the quality of Korean