DISINTEGRATION OF THE EARLY CHOSON 73
store the goods until they could sell them on the market, replace them with bet-
ter goods, or illegally pay substitute rice and cloth. They had to rely on a group
called the masters (chuin) or private masters (sajuin), who had houses or ware-
houses located along the Han River where tribute ships or barges arrived, and
who frequently acted as brokers or agents. These masters charged the district
tribute clerks rent and storage, arranged for the tribute contracting of goods by
the slave private masters of the capital bureaus, and performed other services,
much like the wholesaling kaekchu of later times.
At the beginning of the sixteenth century, the local district tribute clerks had
to borrow money at 50 percent interest to payoff the bureau clerks and slaves,
replace "poor quality" tribute that had been rejected, and dun the peasants for
reimbursement. By the I 540S the peasants' cost of real tribute had increased by
four-or fivefold because of demands for replacement of rejected goods, costs
for transport, paper, and office expenses, or forced payment of substitute rice
and cloth.
Thus the chief perpetrators of tribute contracting after its "abolition" in 1468
were the low-level clerks in the bureaus (sowon) or warehouse clerks (koja),
bureau masters (chuin), most of whom were slaves (nobok) or private masters
of the bureaus (sajuin). Nobok and sajuin held their posts for life and were thor-
oughly familiar with the laws and procedures of government business. Tagawa
K6z6 has argued that these nobok were so skilled in tribute contracting that they
virtually became merchants in the employ of the government, and by the begin-
ning of the sixteenth century competed with the private merchant-warehouse-
men or private masters (sajuin) for control and manipulation of the district tribute
clerks. They set up their own hostels and warehouses, assumed greater risk for
greater profits, and were arrested and transported to the frontier with their fam-
ilies more frequently. They might hold their own stockpiles of goods off the cap-
ital market until the price rose, and then sell them and depress the price so that
they could repurchase them for tribute presentation at lower cost. Ultimately
individual districts were placed in thrall to the capital bureau clerks and slaves,
who held their posts for years and then passed them on hereditarily to their heirsY
Sixteenth-Century Condemnation of Tribute Contracting
Cho Sik in the mid-sixteenth century and Cho Han in 1590 accused the bureau
clerks and official and private masters of monopolizing government finances,
and in 1608 the Office for Dispensing Benevolence (Sanhyech'ang) created to
administer the taedong system in Kyanggi Province summarized the situation
succinctly:
The law of the founders of the dynasty for the presenting of tribute in local
products was perfect, but it developed some problems after it was in operation
for a long time because it provided the opportunity for the masters [chuin] to
make outrageous demands. Tribute goods were sent in kind to the capital, but