772 FINANCIAL REFORM AND THE ECONOMYKwangjo's (d. 1519) general remarks to King Chungjong about the king's duty
to enforce law and punishment to put an end to private requests for favors. I He
might better have cited Cho's charge in 15 I 8 that local tribute assessments were
not uniform throughout the country, pangnap contracting had inflated rice and
cloth charges to taxpayers at three-to-ten times the real market value of tribute
goods, and tribute taxes had become extremely onerous for the peasants com-
pared to the low land-tax rate of one-thirtieth of the crop. Cho told King
Chungjong that if he could find a way to reduce the tribute tax, he could begin
to restore the original laws and spirit of the dynasty, convert the mores of the
people to uprightness, set the minds of the people at ease, and achieve a full dynas-
tic restoration (yusin). Cho himself, however, did not provide a plan for reform?
Although Yu failed to cite Cho's concrete proposal, he was aware of the illicit
tribute contracting business and the practices of the pangnap system. He
remarked that while tribute taxes were increasing, the revenues collected by the
central government from the land tax were decreasing because of corruption.
He had learned from Yulgok's protest to King Sonjo in 1574 about King
Yonsan'gun's extravagant increase in the demands for royal tribute (chinsang),
the increased quotas listed in the Tribute Ledger (Kong 'an) of 1501, and reten-
tion of those annual levies of royal tribute all the way to 1575.^3
YulgokYu was also indebted to Yulgok for the view that reform of the tribute system
was less important than adoption of the general principle that the government
was obliged to pay for goods and services by regular funds (kyongbi) rather than
ad hoc levies or tribute. He quoted Yulgok's remark that in ancient times mag-
istrates were given regular salaries sufficient to feed their families and relatives
as well as themselves. Yulgok also said that although Po I, the minister of rites
under the sage Emperor Shun, never used state funds for his own private pur-
poses, officials in sixteenth-century Korea had been forced to appropriate pub-
lic funds and clerks had extorted goods from the people because they were not
given salaries. Payment for office expenses and goods, transporting goods by
horse and human labor, and entertaining envoys and guests - which were all
paid for under the tribute system - should have come from "tax funds kept on
hand" (yuse) or regular funds (kyongbi). To limit extortion, the quotas of enter-
tainment funds would be regulated by the size of the hostels and post-stations,
and the weights to be transported would be restricted to specific limits. Yulgok's
insistence on the necessity of state funding of official salaries and expenses instead
of using in-kind tribute and uncompensated compulsory labor was of the utmost
importance for Yu's own plans for reform. What Yu did in his own work (see
chap. 20) was to provide a thorough study of the system of state finance and
provide a complete budget that incorporated all official costs including salaries
for all functionaries and the goods, equipment, transport, and labor services
required by the state in the performance of official duties.