70 EARLY CHOSON DYNASTYslave tenants, while more and more of the commoner peasant population were
reduced to marginal sharecroppers or hired laborers. The appearance of tradi-
tional proposals for nationalization, limitation, or even more accurate cadastral
surveys were neglected because the landlords profited from the situation and
prevented any serious reform until the disastrous invasion of Hideyoshi in 1592.TRIBUTE CONTRACTINGNo sooner had the system of in-kind tribute payments levied on the peasant pop-
ulation of the rural villages been instituted at the beginning of the dynasty than
it, too, began to fall apart. It did so because the regulations governing its oper-
ation were too rigid to allow for changing circumstances, and the only way to
maintain the system was to wink at the violations that began to appear. The key
change in the tribute system throughout the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries can
be described as its conversion to a commercial system involving the purchase
and sale of goods on the market financed by fees, commissions, contracts, pay-
offs, and eventually by the adoption of new surtaxes. The degeneration of the
tribute system was perceived by most officials and statecraft thinkers through-
out these two centuries as a serious wart on the body politic. It was a corrup-
tion of the original intent of the founders to establish a regular system of taxation
founded on hoary tradition and respect for law, and an illicit expansion of com-
mercial activity by officials and petty clerks as well as private merchants, all of
whom were governed by the uncontrolled pursuit of profits in trade beyond the
proper limits established by a regime commited to the preservation of Confu-
cian moral standards. What was the response of honest officials and statecraft
thinkers going to be two centuries later when almost everyone agreed that the
tribute system was just too corrupt to continue in its present form?
The Development o( Tribute Contracting
Corruption of the system occurred early in the fifteenth century when certain
districts that no longer produced tribute items asked for permission to pay rice
instead. The government permitted it and temporarily allowed government agen-
cies to purchase goods it needed on the market. In other instances, when dis-
tricts were obliged to pay tribute in items they had never produced, magistrates
had to send clerks or runners around to buy tribute items, and some northern
districts even had to trade strategic military materials like horses, oxen, and iron
to obtain furs from the Jurchen.
For ordinary tributc payments, the district magistrate would select one of his
clerks to be tribute clerk (kongni) to transport tribute goods (kongmul) to a cap-
ital bureau. Thc bureau clerk, however, frequently rejected the tribute (chomt'oe)
on the grounds of poor quality. The bureau clerk could either insist on another
payment of higher quality goods, demand that the tribute clerk arrange for sub-