950 FINANCIAL REFORM AND THE ECONOMY
have recovered enough so that an additional tax cut of one yang of cash and two
p'il could be made.^26 By this means he hoped that the problems in the military
support tax system (yangyok) could be solved without the need for further reme-
dial action such as a major revision of the tax system.
In other words, Yi Chongje worked out a plan to solve the problems of both
military support taxes and cash simultaneously. He favored retaining the cash
portion of the military cloth tax and the use of cash in the economy, but he also
hoped to provide relief to peasant taxpayers by reducing the military support
tax by one yang/adult male and imposing a 20 percent limit on interest rates on
cash loans. Although interest rate limitation would at least theoretically rein in
the moneylenders, Yi's package appears to have been a conservative attempt to
reform the military cloth tax system without eliminating current exemptions and
expanding the tax base. He opposed adopting either a household or per capita
tax that would have placed a uniform levy on all households of all social status
groups, two of the favorite proposals of the egalitarian reformers.
YOngjo then complained to his state councilors that although he had summoned
officials to come to court to present their views, only about a dozen or so had
actually made their appearance, too few upon which to make decisions on these
important matters. This was a rather flimsy excuse for inaction since the debate
over this issue had been one of the most complex and comprehensive discus-
sions of currency in the history of the dynasty. He realized that the cash reserves
in government treasuries was a serious problem especially if it had to be spent
after a new medium of exchange was chosen, but he had already made up his
mind to get rid of cash to put an end to chicanery and permit human beings to
purge their minds of evil inclinations - a solid endorsement of his original views
and those of Prince YohUng andYun Sun. In the past he had agreed to the demand
of his high officials to mint more cash, and the Office for Dispensing Benevo-
lence had as a result imported more copper from the Japanese at the Waegwan,
but he felt that it was fundamentally wrong. He knew that it would be improper
and insincere for him to permit more cash to be minted, but he was so troubled
over the possibility that he might be persuaded to do so against his will that he
had not been able to sleep through the night. Nonetheless, he postponed a deci-
sion to abolish cash because he was also worried about losing the government's
current cash reserves.^27
A few days later the discussion resumed, but some of the participants were
more forceful in their arguments. The practical Second Minister of War Cho
Munmyong derided the bookish scholars who advocated the abolition of cash
without ever having learned the real facts. Had they done so, they would have
realized that, "Since ancient times there has never been a country that did not
have cash, and once you have it, you have to mint it because it would be con-
trary to reason to stop minting it after you have decided to use it." When cash
was first introduced into Korea, it was minted annually by capital and provin-
cial offices, and each coin had a single character on the reverse side of the coin
identifying the mint. The last big minting occurred in 1696 when the governor