58 EARLY CHOSON DYNASTYCotton cloth, called "ordinary 5-sae cloth" (sang osungp'o), began to replace
ramie cloth in the market, but it caused some confusion in terminology because
5-sae ramie cloth was ordinarly twice the value of the 2-sae or 3-sae rough
(ch 'up () or ordinary ramie cloth. Now 5-sae cotton cloth was often called rough
cloth and was worth half as much as 5-sae ramie. Since it became difficult to
assess the value of cloth, the cheaper rough cotton cloth drove 5-sae ramie off
the market, and cotton cloth of still Jesser thread count and cheaper value was
made as well. The 1460 taxation code attempted to regularize the two grades of
5-sae and 3-sae cloth by ordering that all bolts be stamped on both ends with
the slogan, "the seal of the Chason Circulating Treasure" (Chason t'ongp 'ye).
The code did not make clear whether it was distinguishing between ramie and
cotton when it mentioned two grades of fineness, 5-sae and 3-sae cloth, but even-
tually it must have been used to assess two grades of fineness for circulating
bolts of cotton cloth. Eventually cloth was debased even further by shortening
the size of the bolt from the standard 35 to 30 "feet" in length, a tendency that
became worse during Yonsan'gun's reign (1494 to 1506).86
After King Songjong came to the throne in 1469 he attempted to revive the
use of paper money by fiat to enforce its use for market transactions, redemp-
tion of punishments, half the amount of medicinal purchases, tribute levies on
official slaves, and per capita taxes on artisans, merchants, and shops, but in 1472
he virtually admitted defeat by allowing official slaves, whose numbers had grown
to 350,000, to pay their tribute taxes in grain - one of the most important stim-
ulants that the government controlled for inducing the use of paper bills.
The value of paper money plummeted still further. In 1470 the value of one
bill fell to 1/40 p'i! of correct (ramie) cloth (chOngp'o) and 1/ 20 p'i! of ordinary
(ramie) cloth (sangp '0), and from one toe of rice in 1460 to 1/10 toe by the end
of 1473. The government suffered a great financial loss because of the decline
in the value of the money it was currently holding in its treasuries.
In 1474 King Songjong tried to resuscitate paper money once more rather than
write off all the government's paper reserves. Between 1475 and 1480 he replaced
the large and unwieldy Korean bill with a smaller one, expecting that the value
of paper bills would be increased by reducing the volume of bills in circulation,
but it did not become more popular, and even government officials refused to
use them, leaving mountains of bills to rot in storage.^87 The Aid Bureau at the
time had an accumulated reserve of 3,722,903 old bills that the public refused
to accept, but only IOl,078 new bills, and Songjong made no attempt to print
new bills because he had lost faith in the utility of paper money altogether.^88
In 15 I 5, King Chungjong made one more failed attempt to spend paper money,
but by 1522 he had to admit that it had completely disappeared from use in recent
years. As for copper cash, the Chason t'ongbo copper coin had been minted
throughout the fifteenth century, and the new Ever-Normal Circulating Treasure
(Sangp 'yi5ng t'ongbo) began to replace it after 15 15, but it too failed to win pop-
ular acceptance. Bolts of cotton and bags of grain remained the paramount media
of exchange, but quality of the cotton cloth had also deteriorated by the early