OFFICIAL SALARIES AND EXPENSES 821Truly if the ruler of men gave one look at how the people had been dunned for
payment, kicked and beaten in the back alleys of the towns, made to sufTer from
the cold and heat along the roads, and left with no one to whom to utter their
grievous sighs or distress, then even though the king might desire such goods, he
would not bc able to bear [listening toj the sobs of the people. How much less
[would hc have tolerated I some of these rank-smelling goods which people eas-
ily abhor, which are no good to mouth or stomach, and which cause injury to
thousands of people,
This is not hard to understand, but the ruler only sits on his fine rug in the
inner recesses of the palace and thinks that since he is the ruler, there is no way
that he would purposely have planned for these evils to exist But the obsequious
and fawning ministers think that this is the natural way to express love for their
ruler and do nothing about it. If anyone should speak out and say that [royal trib-
ute] has plagued the country and caused the loss of virtue, others only point to
them and say that they have no respect for their king. This is the reason why it
would never end until every district in the country was destroyed. IIYu then damned the Korean institution of royal tribute by an invidious com-
parison with the situation in China. Not only was there no record of any equiv-
alent to the royal tribute of Korea in the three dynasties of Chinese antiquity
(san-taj), but since Han and T'ang times the Chinese had a separate agency, that
is a bureaucratic office that purchased all tribute items from regular tax revenues.
"Never have I heard of tribute presented to the throne from the outer provinces
[oebang chinsang]," Nor for that matter was there any Chinese term equivalent
to the chinsang (royal tribute) used in Korea. Even Emperor Te-tsung ofthe T'ang
dynasty, a ruler thoroughly castigated by historians for his excessive collections
of gifts, never received anything more than silk, certainly not the monthly offer-
ings of fish presented to Korean kings, In the Ming dynasty, imperial gifts became
more complicated, but still tax revenues in silver and cash were paid to the Court
ofImperial Entertainments (Kuang-lu-ssu), which then purchased all items pre-
sented to the emperor on the market This system furnished abundant supplies
to meet the emperor's needs without ever having an equivalent of Korean royal
tribute (chinsang) levied on peasants as a separate tax,
In Korea, royal necessities were never funded by regular taxes and there was
never an agency in the regular bureaucracy to handle royal tribute, because all
royal tribute items were paid directly to royal agencies that handled cuisine,
bedding, clothing, and other functions. Two-thirds of royal tribute was presented
by the capital bureaus to the king, and districts in the provinces had to make
royal tribute payments monthly or daily. So many men were involved in the
transportation and handling of tribute in the capital that it appeared that 80 or
90 percent of the population was occupied in transporting royal tribute offer-
ings through the post-stations to the capital. 12
Yu attributed the inability of Korean kings to achieve good government to the
adoption of improper laws and institutions almost at the outset of Korea's recorded