914 FINANCIAL REFORM AND THE ECONOMY
presumably backed by imports of copper from abroad, would in fact have meant
a far greater investment of funds by the government to ensure a sufficient sup-
ply of money.
Not only did Yu insist on providing a new brass coin of high standard of man-
ufacture and a sufficient supply of it to spread its use throughout the market, he
also agreed with many previous advocates of currency (and paper money) that
the rough bolts of cloth (eh 'up 0) that had been used for currency had to be abol-
ished altogether. He also noted that paper money had already disappeared from
the Korean economy by his own time.
Unravel Monetary Bolts of ClothHe remarked that currently fine cloth of six-sae thread count was being used in
both official and private transactions in which a thirty-"foot" length was defined
as one p'iI and a fifteen-"foot" length as one-half p 'ii, but that the bolts of cloth
used as currency had been devalued by reduction of the thread count to two to
three sae, creating commodity price inflation. He charged that government and
private savings stored in warehouses had virtually been rendered worthless, the
skill and labor of the women weavers wasted, and many ordinary people bank-
rupted and driven to thievery to support themselves. The king should order the
unraveling of all bolts of rough cloth currently possessed, prohibit any weav-
ing of it in the future, search the marketplaces for bolts of this cloth, and admin-
ister beatings to the violators! His willingness to impose punishment reflected
his determination to eliminate any expectation that the government might soon
reverse its policy, as it had done so many times in the past. Only after the rough
cloth disappeared from sight and was replaced by cash as the medium of exchange
could the government allow cloth to be traded on the market again.^55
Establish Shops to Circulate Cash
Yu also prescribed that the government use the familiar device of establishing
shops in the wards of the capital, district and garrison towns, post-stations, and
hostels to accept cash for transactions, but according to a set quota of shops for
each site. In the capital city officials would capitalize these shops so that they
might loan rice, grain, and other articles on favorable terms, and allow them lib-
erallimits for repayment of the loans in cash, and in the provinces private par-
ties would be allowed to establish their own shops and be granted exemption
from the ordinary shop tax. Government aid for the establishment of shops in
tiles, kitchen utensils, plates, tables, and the like would be established by gov-
ernment loans from fcledong tax reserves to shopkeepers.
In the provinces those merchants allowed to establish new shops under the
numerical limits he proposed would be given land grants according to his land
distribution scheme, but in the villages individuals who wanted to establish shops
in villages would be allowed to do so without a grant of land from the state. The