806 FIN ANCIAL REFORM AND THE ECONOMY
of items that had previously been rendered to the government as tribute, the gov-
ernment found it could not reject merchant demands and passed the cost on to
the taxpayers. Taken at face value, this rise in the cost of the taedong tax may
have occurred because it was difficult to maintain parity between the govern-
ment-established commutation rate and the real market price of cloth, a price
that fluctuated with the value of cloth as well as the value of grain, which was
commonly subject to annual variations in the size of the crop. The price of cloth
could have risen because of an improvement in the quality of manufacture, or
an increase in demand, or shortage of supply. Whatever the cause in the rising
price of cotton cloth, it was bound to increase taxes on those upland residents
who did not weave the cloth themselves but had to pay grain to buy cloth to pay
their taedong tax in cloth.
Pae and his colleagues also charged that the taedong tax failed to achieve an
equal and just distribution of taxes throughout the country according to the method
used in the ancient "tribute ofYii" (Yit Kung), by which tribute levies varied
according to the type of grain and the distance of the area from the capital. By
contrast, in contemporary Korea residents of Chima Province were paying thir-
teen mal/kyo! while those living in Ch'ungch'ong only paid a lower ten mal/kyol
rate. Since Ch'ungch'ong was closer to the capital than Cholla, its districts were
allowed to accumulate large surpluses of revenue in their granaries.
Cloth taxpayers in the uplands of Cholla were also subject to arbitrary rejec-
tions of their cloth taxes on the grounds of poor quality, something that rice tax-
payers presumably did not have to suffer, and transportation costs by land were
still being collected in violation of taedong regulations, increasing the real tax
rate to the equivalent of twenty-five to twenty-six mal/kyo!, compared to the thir-
teen mal/kyo! paid by the lowland farmers. Instead of charging a constant rate
in all districts in upland Cholla, magistrates were allegedly charging rates that
varied considerably. This complaint, however, seems to have been directed against
favorable treatment for large landlords in particular because the magistrates were
accused of levying the same tax on large landlords who had seven to eight kyol
as well as smallholders who had only one or two kyo! of land, in obvious vio-
lation of the law.
Naturally, these Cholla scholars preferred the old tribute system because
no matter how burdensome it had been, the government could obtain any item
it wanted directly without needing a reserve fund of rice and cloth. The tae-
dong system also drove up the price of some items in the capital that were
relatively cheap where they were produced locally. Market purchases had mul-
tiplied the cost to the government many times over and increased taxes on the
landowners.
Prior to the introduction of the taedong reform, taxes in the upland districts
in the south were collected twice a year, the first half was the land tax (chonse),
and the second half the miscellaneous taxes (chabyok). Pae Ki and his comrades
complained, however, that the six mal/kyOlland tax and commuted taedong cloth
tax (on the uplands) were collected in the spring and summer, and the taedong