944 FINANCIAL REFORM AND THE ECONOMY
and other towns in Kyongsang Province as well as in the Ministry of Taxation
and the military divisions and agencies in the capital.
Brevet Minister of War Yi T'aejwa, who had previously suggested printing
paper money, now proclaimed that no other medium besides cash could be found
and rejected Kim Tongp'il's endorsement of Hong's compromise plan. He told
Yongjo that he had forewarned Hong that his plan would fail because a prohi-
bition against government use of cash would only create a roadblock in the flow
of trade and obstruct the purchase of former tribute items on the market by the
capital bureaus, a prediction that had recently proved valid. He advocated mint-
ing more cash to correct the shortage and ease tax burdens caused by the gov-
ernment's ban on minting for the past thirty years. Furthermore, since the high
value of cash had also attracted more counterfeiters, he recommended that they
be decapitated and their heads displayed on the district border as a warning to
others.23
Cho Wonmyong, the third minister of the Ministry of Works, opposed replac-
ing cash with cotton cloth because it, too, could rise in value because of short-
ages. Diverting cotton cloth to use as a medium of exchange would also reduce
the supply of cotton available for clothing, and the weavers of the south would
never be able to produce enough cloth to meet the needs of the people of
Kangwon and Hamgyong provinces during the winter. Weavers would begin
weaving cloth of lesser value to serve as currency, which would then lose its
value in a few years.
Sixth Royal Secretary Yi Chongp'il favored retention of cash because he
thought it was essential for a successful reform of the military support tax sys-
tem. He thought the fiscal shortage in the military system was the product of
Korea's incomplete adoption of the tripartite tax system of the T'ang dynasty.
Of the three taxes of the T'ang dynasty, the Choson government had only adopted
the land (tsu) and labor service (yung) taxes, but had never had an equivalent to
the tiao or household tax, which in T'ang times was a cash tax. In other words,
Yi was advocating a graded version of a household cash tax as the best means
of expanding the tax base beyond the the personal cloth tax that had been lim-
ited to a shrinking pool of adult male yangmin. The household tax would be
divided into three grades (according to the number of either adult males or fam-
ily members), four to five yang of cash for a large household, three for a medium-
sized household, and two for a small one. Cash was essential to permit emulation
of the T'ang tiao, especially since paper money and bolts of cloth would pro-
duce the same kinds of problems that plagued cash if the government failed to
manage their use properly. The king also had to mint more cash to prevent the
price of rice from falling and damaging the income of the people engaged in
agriculture.
Yi ChOngp'il 's justification for cash was directly related to his conviction that
the expansion of the tax base for the military support tax could best be achieved
by shifting the object of the tax from the adult male of a restricted population
of yangmin to the majority of households in the country. Possibly because the