TRIBUTE AND THE TAEDONG REFORM 781charged that because the government failed to follow up enactment of reform
by careful surveillance over the laws and continued to rely on the clerks who
used the pangnap method to collect special levies of tribute items, the clerks
were as COlTupt as ever, and the rice surtax had proved more troublesome than
the tribute system.
Han believed that tribute reform failed in the 1590S because the government
was too concerned about raising as much tax revenue as possible and neglected
the problem of establishing a fair and uniform tax rate on the taxpayers. While
the standard surtax rate of two maUkyril might be retained, he felt it should be
lowered by grades for districts located farther than two days transportation from
the coastal transshipment port. The discontent of the capital merchants could
be alleviated by guaranteeing a generous price for market purchases, anywhere
from two to five times better than the market price, neither raising (tax rates and
prices) in a bumper crop year or reducing them during a bad crop. Guaranteed
good prices would allow all those people participating in illicit pangnap con-
tracts to function like honest brokers engaged simply in the transfer of goods
from areas of surplus to areas of need with proper and legitimate opp0l1unities
for profit. If goods unavailable in the capital shops were needed for ritual cel-
ebrations or for the king's use, officials would be allowed to make special
demands for tribute in kind from a given locality, but to prevent double taxa-
tion they would have to deduct the value of the goods in rice and cloth from the
new surtax revenues.
The essence of Han's proposal was recommended by Second State Councilor
Yi Won'ik in 1608. King Kwanghaegun adopted the new proposal, called the
taedongbop or taedong system, but to test the plan he restricted its application
to Kyonggi Province only. He established the Taedong Agency (Taedongch'ong,
later changed to the Office for the Dispensation of Benevolence, Sonhyech'ong,
in 1614) to handle the surtax revenues, and set the annual tax rate at sixteen
mal/kyol of rice, collected half in the spring and half in the fall, without any
variation in the rate according to the quality of the annual crop - eight times
higher than Han Paekkyom's proposal (orYu Songnyong's tax rate in 1594). The
tax rate was not only calculated to raise sufficient revenue to pay for purchas-
ing tribute goods (kongmul) and special royal tribute (chinsang), but two ofthe
sixteen mal were used to pay for items and salaries required by district magis-
trates' offices and the cost of horse transportation in the capital (kyongswaema).
The new law was supported by a half dozen high officials at court, praised in a
petition of 263 Kyonggi residents, and backed by young censors and lower rank-
ing gentry and commoners. Kwanghaegun, however, rejected a proposal to extend
the taedong system to Kangwon Province in 1610, probably because he was dis-
suaded by its opponents. IX
In reviewing the history of the taedong reform to 1608, Yu began his account
with Yulgok's astute observation of the injustices of the tribute question and the
intriguing institution of a land-tax substitute for tribute finance by the magistrate
of Haeju. Yu also cited Yulgok's criticism of royal tribute in Korea because it