50 EARLY CHOSON DYNASTYhold tribute rate could be far heavier in one district than another, and the only
recourse the peasants had against an onerous tribute was to break the law and
abscond. Furthelmore, because the district's tribute quota was determined by
the amount of land in the district, it was not possible to reduce village tribute
taxes to alleviate excessive rates in any given village. Kings could issue a spe-
cial dispensation to reduce tribute rates, but they rarely did so.
There was also no way for the government to return tribute if the supply
exceeded demand, but the government did not hesitate to impose additional or
special levies or demand payment of the next year's tribute in advance.7^2 Mag-
istrates distributed tribute levies by household according to some calculation of
the amount of land it cultivated and the size of its family. The levy was assessed
on the household of cultivators, not just owners. Even though tenancy had been
forbidden until 1424, tenancy was practiced anyway and tenant cultivators had
to pay their tribute quota in addition to half their crop in rent.
Although the details of calculating household population for tribute assess-
ments at the beginning of the dynasty have not been preserved, it must have been
similar to the method for assessing labor service. In 1392 the labor service law
required that one male be furnished by a large household containing ten or more
adult males, or by every two medium households with five or more adult males
each, or by every three households with four or less adult males each.
In 1401 the basis of labor service was changed to a calculation of cultivated
land, onc adult male for every three kyat of land was adopted. The rate was reduced
to one adult male for every five kyat in 143 T, and finally. one adult male for
every eight kyol (or six kyol if more men were needed) in 1470. In other words,
some mix between the population of a household and the amount ofland it cul-
tivated (whether owners or tenants) produced a basis for household tribute assess-
ments. The district clerks who were responsible for assessing household tribute
levies used the opportunity to exploit the peasants, and the magistrates never
published a written schedule of tax payments for their own districts. The trib-
ute ledgers that set quotas of tribute items for each district were changed only
after twenty or thirty years and in the interval districts were required to provide
the same items even though they may have ceased their production.?3 As men-
tioned before, royal tribute (chinsang) was especially onerous because it could
be levied on a monthly or even daily basis, and the peasants, particularly in
Kyonggi Province, were subject to frequent and unrestricted demands.^74THE FAILURE OF PAPER MONEY AND COPPER CASH
Pre-Chason History of CurrencyMetallic cash as well as paper money disappeared from Korean markets by the
middle of the sixteenth century, a reflection of the limitations on the volume of
trade and the regression of the Korean economy to primary agricultural production
in which bags of grain and bolts of cloth were the main media of exchange. This