TRIBUTE AND THE TAEDONG REFORM 809
one mal, but by restoring the eight mal/p'i! commutation rate he created a tax
rate of sixteen mallkvi5/ for the upland region, 33 percent higher than the twelve
mallkyrll rate in the lowland districts. He may have intended to punish the large
landlords of upland Cholla for defying his will, but the same rate fell on the
small cultivators as welJ.74
In any case, the difficulty in establishing a fair tax rate for the taedong tax
because of the variation between the market prices of cloth and grain and the
government's commutation rate and the variation in the tax rates between one
province and another explains why resistance to the law itself continued even
after the extension of the law to four provinces and parts of two others as well.
These difficulties, however, did not impinge too severely on the favor by which
the reform was generally held by most commoner peasants.
Extension to Hamgwlng, [666During the time that the court was debating the extension of the taedong sys-
tem to upland Cholla, in 1666 the governor of Hamgyong Province, Min
Chongjung, complained that taxes on the peasants had increased because there
had been no regulation of tax rates. He received approval from King Hyonjong
to carry out tax reform in the name of the Detailed Tax Regulation Law
(sangjongbOp) which was a close approximation to the taedong system else-
where. Taxes in rice, cloth, or other goods assessed on land were to be used to
pay for regular and royal tribute assessed on each district, and the remainder
left after these tribute items were purchased was kept in the province to pay for
administrative costs. The Ever-Normal Bureau (Sangp'yongch'ong) received all
sangj6ng taxes from the districts and took charge of payment to capital bureaus
in place of the magistrates of each individual districP5
Thus. by 1666 the taedong system or its equivalent had been extended to all
provinces but Kyongsang in the southeast, p'yong'an. and Hwanghae. but in the
latter two provinces some aspects of the taedong substitution of land taxes for
in-kind tribute payments had been adopted as well.
THE TAEDONG SYSTEM AFTER 1666
The handling of the taedong tax in Cholla in the decade after 1658 demonstrated
concern by King Hyonjong and some of his officials for public opinion in gen-
eral and sympathy for the plight of the small landowning and poorer peasants.
The reason why Hyonjong apparently vacillated over the suitability of the law
was the inexactitude of his information about public sentiment. In that period,
since no one was aware of any possibility of conducting large scale surveys of
opinion. the king and court had to rely on reports submitted by the provincial
governor, who could accept. reject, or color reports from his district magistrates.
Hyonjong's lack of faith in this regular channel of information, however, was
demonstrated by the alacrity of his response to the secret censor's more detailed