72 EARLY CHOSON DYNASTYthe government was forced either to collect the next year's tribute in advance or
impose extra tribute levies. Eventually Sejo's rational attempt to cut the cost of
tribute was completely frustrated by the profligate King Y6nsan'gun (r. 1494-
I506), who broke records in imposing daily demands for tribute payments.^29
Merchants had been active in tribute contracting since the Kory6 dynasty, but
they had been overshadowed by the monks during Sejong's reign. In 1464 Yang
S6ngji proposed an entirely different solution to the problem, a method based
on legalizing tribute contracting so that the state could control it. He tried to
persuade King Sejo of the utility of this solution because the merchants had vir-
tually taken control of the "miscellaneous taxes" (chapse), or tribute, away from
the government itself, a particularly serious situation since those taxes consti-
tuted 60 percent of state income (vs. 40 percent for the land tax). He proposed
that the Samsa (Financial Commission) of the Kory6 dynasty be revived and
combined with the transport commissioner (Unj6nsa) to control and regulate
tribute contracting by merchants in the hope of increasing state revenue, but Sejo
refused to approve his idea.
In 1468, however. Sejo made his own adaptation to the reality of tribute con-
tracting by instructing magistrates to set aside a certain amount of rice collected
when the land tax was paid as a reserve to pay tribute contractors only after they
presented a receipt for the payment of tribute goods from the Ministry of Tax-
ation. This was the first step toward the eventual replacement of tribute by rice
and cloth taxes by the end of the sixteenth century, but it could not be enforced
because Sejo died three months after he issued the order. Thereafter, there were
only two instances of temporary replacement of tribute with a rice or cloth tax,
in 1515 and 1525, to provide relief funds. The serious replacement of tribute by
a land tax was not suggested seriously until Yulgok did so in 1574, and not adopted
by the king until 1594, and then only temporarily. 3 D
King Yejong's Crackdown Against Corruption, 1468
When King Yejong came to the throne in 1468, he adopted the line of strict moral
rectitude and immediately reversed Sejo's policies by banning substitute pay-
ments and contractual tributc altogether. However, when his uncle's slave was
caught violating the law in 1470, he, too violated it by pardoning the slaveY
The prohibition served to inhibit regular officials, yangban, and merchants from
any overt illegal contracting, but it allowed clerks and official slaves to reap illicit
prollts by rejecting tribute items or keeping them in storage without issuing
receipts to the district tribute clerks (kongni), a practice called yunan. The dis-
trict tribute clerks themselves also violated laws with impunity. When they arrived
in the capital they kcpt the goods hidden while they negotiated with merchants
to sell the goods at a profit and repurchase cheaper goods to offer as tribute.
The district tribute clerks were also subject to exploitation and manipulation
by the bureau clerks in the capital, who might delay acceptance of the tribute
goods or reject them altogether. The district tribute clerks wcrc then forced to