Yu's ANALYSIS OF CURRENCY 921from his own description of these places, they appear to have been the equiva-
lent of flea markets held in open fields rather than either constructed shops built
in market areas designated by the state, or even periodic five-day markets held
in market towns. He was willing to approve the periodic markets since they
allowed local villagers to exchange goods among themselves, and he even advised
the government to cease the current market taxes (changse) that district magis-
trates and their clerks and runners were levying on trade among ordinary peas-
ants in periodic markets. In his view, market taxes were warranted only if levied
on professional merchants who had their designated shops in market areas.
He did not believe that the choice of occupation was to be left to the free will
of all individuals lest the basic population of cultivators be reduced by unre-
strained pursuit of commerce. The "empty" or flea markets were undesirable
because they attracted flocks of troublemakers and starving peasants who had
no legitimate occupations of their own, got drunk, and started fights with oth-
ers. "They don't hesitate to butcher oxen, they drink together without any restraint,
they do damage to mores and destroy customs, and they brew trouble and com-
mit robbery." The very existence of these markets provided a "den of evil for
vagrants escaping famine in their home towns." Only if such markets were held
farther than thirty Ii (seven and one-quarter miles) from any town or post-sta-
tion, could they be tolerated. In short, the commercial economy, let alone indus-
trial production, was to be kept under control and restraint, and left to perform
a subsidiary role in an agricultural economy. no
CONCLUSION
Yu Hyongwon's advocacy of copper cash certainly appeared enlightened and
progressive in his own time because the lack of an adequate currency had made
the Korean economy appear backward by comparison with trade and commerce
in Ch' ing China and Tokugawa Japan. Yu was obviously caught up in the move-
ment for cash that had started at the beginning of the century, but he derived
most of his ideas about the proper mode of currency, the regulation of its value
in the market, and measures to stimulate and ensure its successful adoption from
the Chinese experience and major commentaries on the problems of cash by
Chinese statesmen and writers over two millennia, not just the recent history of
the late Ming (he refrained from commenting on the early Ch'ing) and the infor-
mation he obtained from Hendrik Hamel's compatriots about currency in the
Western world. He was acutely aware of Korea's inability to develop a pernla-
nent cash economy on its own except for a few brief experiments, and he blamed
it on the backward and barbaric legacy of the Korean Three Kingdoms. While
it is possible that a sense of nationalistic pride motivated Yu to advocate poli-
cies that would bring Korea abreast of China and sought to bOiTOW methods and
models previously worked out by the Chinese, it appears more likely that the
classical model of ancient China provided his own standard of perfection, and
experiments in post-Ch'in China informed him about some of the problems