Yu's ANALYSIS OF CURRENCY 909
natural forces. In other words, the wisdom ofYu's emphasis on the need for guid-
ance and leadership from the top cannot be discredited by examining the con-
crete performance of currency policy in the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries
that Yu ignored. His criticism about the lack of sufficient government guidance
and support rather than a public perception of the worthlessness of paper might
well have been true about the failure of cash and paper money to circulate suc-
cessfully in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.
Some of the same problems of insufficient government support for cash
recurred after the late sixteenth century. King Sonjo rejected the suggestion of
Yang Hao, the Ming general, to adopt cash, and King Injo's cash policy in I625
was frustrated by the shortage of copper, but in 1633 he went further than any
previous king by requiring that one-fourth to one-third of all tribute, one-tenth
of the tax to support the new samsu special troops, and expenses for bureaus
and hired labor in the capital be paid for in cash. Nonetheless, not enough cash
was minted to meet the demand and circulation was interrupted by the Manchu
invasions early in 1637. Since the government noticed that most cash was cir-
culating only in the capital, it pressed the Ever-Normal Bureau throughout the
I 630S to spread the use of cash to the provinces and allow the use of cash through-
out the tax system.
When Kim Yuk first entered the picture in I 644, he introduced a number of
recommendations, but his main interest was to spread the use of cash to ease
travel expenses throughout the main transportation route between Seoul and
China, and he sought to solve the shortage of copper by importing cash directly
from China. After his proposal was ignored, he then hoped to persuade King
Hyojong simply to adopt cash for a few provinces, preferably in the northwest.
In 1650 he brought in a supply of cash from China and urged Hyojong to pur-
chase more with silver, but Hyojong was faced with an immediate fiscal short-
age and could not afford the cost. In 1654 Hyojong decided to collect in cash
either I2.5 or 20 percent of taedong taxes, 20 percent of tribute offered to cap-
ital bureaus. and 33.3 percent of the tribute paid by official slaves in addition to
other items. By I654 Hyojong was coming closer to meeting Yu's criterion for
serious government support of a cash policy but was still some distance from
meeting Yu's requirement that half of all taxes and government payments be paid
for in cash, and that the government finance all copper and cash needed by imports
from other countries.^46
CURRENCY PROPOSALS FOR KOREAUpgrading Mint TechnologyAfter finishing his account of cash in the Koryo period, Yu then plunged imme-
diately into his concrete proposals for a cash policy in his own time, presum-
ably written after 1656. He again rejected the popular contention that Koreans
could not accommodate themselves to cash because their customs were so dif-