CONFUCIAN STATECRAFT 55
for Providing Aid (Sasomsi) established thirty smelting ovens that produced
48,060 kun (50,666Ibs.) of copper a year. Still short of copper for coins in 1426,
King Sejong melted down Buddhist bells, statues, and other implements and
prohibited the use and manufacture of copper and iron utensils, to increase the
supply of copper for coinsJ9
The government attempted to increase its copper imports from Japan with lim-
ited success. Between 1419 and 1428 Korea had imported only 14,820 kun of
copper in official trade, and another 28,000 kun in private trade in 1428, a total
of 42,820 (47,102 Ibs.), still a minuscule sum compared to major shipments of
150,000 to 300,000 kiin (165,000-330,000 Ibs.) from Japan to Ming China in
this period. The volume of Japanese copper imports did not increase, for even
in the early seventeenth century after the establishment of the Tokugawa regime
in Japan, the supply of Japanese copper imports averaged only about 27,000
kun/year. Obviously the difficulty at this time was the inability of the Korean
economy to finance the imports. As a result copper cash only circulated in the
capital at Hansongbu. and the supply of coins there barely reached several thou-
sand strings to meet the demands of 100,000 residents.xo
Despite the shortage of copper the value of coins minted in 1423 had declined
to one-third their value, from one to 'I, toe of rice by 1425, and to '/'3 toe by
- Ch'oe Hojin speculated that the cash supply was too large because coins
from the Koryo period and China, along with undetermined amounts minted by
counterfeiters, were also circulating along with the new official coins, but the
public mistrust ofthe coins might be a better explanation.^8 '
King Sejong ordered that taxes on shamans, merchants, artisans, and house
sites in the capital be converted to cash payments, and that official slaves con-
vert all their personal tribute payments from cloth and paper money to cash. In
1425 there were 1 19,630 official slaves, and each male slave had to pay an annual
tribute tax of 100 mUf1 of cash and each female slave 50 mlln to the state, a total
of8,955,350 mun or about 9,000 strings (kan) of cash. Unfortunately, only 3,000
to 4,000 strings had been put into circulation at the time, far less than what slaves
needed to meet their annual tribute payments, let alone other taxes and com-
mercial transactions. Even by 1427, the total amount of cash in circulation was
estimated at not more than about 12,000 strings - not enough for official slaves,
artisans, merchants, shopkeepers, and shamans to pay their taxes in cash. Since
the market had virtually ground to a halt because of cash insufficiency, Sejong
relaxed the law in 1425 to allow cloth and other media of exchange to be used.
Likewise, the Ministry of Taxation's attempt to raise the value of cash in the
market in 1426 by using price stabilization intervention tactics also failed because
the ministry allocated only 20,000 strings for purchasing commodities. Finally,
when a risc in rice prices following a drought forced a decline in the value of
cash from '/7 toe per ml.ll7 of cash in the first lunar month of 1427 to 'II, toe in
1429, and the value of cash dropped below the cost of minting a one-mun coin,
which was '/7 to '/y toe, no one was willing to use cash on the market, and smug-