TRIBUTE AND THE TAEDONG REFORM 775
deer tongues, and horns that were the special pleasure of the king, they might
be rejected if they were not the right species, if the flavor was not up to stan-
dard or lost during the several days needed to transport them to the capital, if
they spoiled during the heat of summer or were kept too long in the ice house
in the capital. And if the items could not be captured or produced, they would
have to buy them on the capital market at high prices because they were in demand
among the capital aristocrats. He urged the king to reduce the quotas oflive deer
and salt pork, even if only by a half dozen head, and to demand only "live deer"
rather than any particular type of deer. Deer tongues and tails might as well be
abolished altogether because they never tasted right, and it would absolve the
peasants of one of their most difficult burdens. The least the king could do would
be to limit the quotas for live animals or perishable goods to the winter season
between the tenth and second lunar months, to eliminate the losses from
spoilage.^8 Later in 1576, Yulgok also attempted to set a schedule of values or
prices of tribute items for the whole province to prevent magistrates and clerks
from overcharging peasants for substitute payments, but only two districts adopted
his rates.^9
Cho Hi5f1
Yu Hyongwon was also heavily indebted to the proposals of Cho Hon, a close
friend ofYulgok and an advocate of reform of the tribute system when he was
assistant to the governor of Cholla Province in [58 1.^10 After his return from an
embassy to China three years earlier, Cho reported that the imperial cuisine
agency in Ming China used tax payments in silver to purchase food from the
market, a result of the transformation of the two major modes of taxation, the
land tax and labor service, into silver payments, a process that became domi-
nant after the middle of the sixteenth century. I I Not only was China blessed with
a large population and many horses, but they also had an cxtensive system of
water transport. Some of the sage rulers of antiquity had concluded that it would
be far cheaper to transport perishables by water rather than by land over thou-
sands of miles, and that if they paid for it in silver, it would only take one horse
to bring the silver instead of 600 horses to transport the goods in kind. Once
this system was adopted, the population was no longer burdened with paying
several mUltiples of the original tax or with heavy hauling of goods at every
post-station. Since the markets were always filled with goods and any item could
be purchased for silver at market prices, the emperor never lacked any of the
delicacies he desired for his table.
Cho contrasted the Chinese situation with the rigors and burdens of royal trib-
ute in Korea. The Chinese population had grown more prosperous and enjoyed
the wonders of a solid period of great peace. All along the routc between the
Yalu River and the Ming capital, even though some areas were obviously bar-
ren, the human and animal populations were plentiful and the people was con-
tent and prosperous primarily because the imperial court was concerned about