956 FINANCIAL REFORM AND THE ECONOMY
of multiple-denomination coins as well, leaving only grain and cloth as the media
of exchange. The process would take place so gradually that neither official agen-
cies nor the public would feel any pain.
Won Yuhan has pointed out that Yi Ik's proposal was unique for the 1 720S but
was repeated later by Chong Sanggi (1678-1752), who wanted to remove cash
from the economy because the extremely high value of cash had caused defla-
tion in commodity prices and economic hardship to people engaged in com-
merce as well as agriculture. He proposed a progressive program of minting
multiple-denomination cash beginning with a Is-cash coin and advancing over
a period of forty years to a IOo-cash coin. When that stage was reached, the
weight and value of the coin would become so great that the people would real-
ize that bolts of cloth and bags of rice would be far more convenient than cash
and abandon the use of copper coins altogether. Won had dubbed this idea one
of the best examples he has found of erroneous, unrealistic, impractical, con-
servative, and retrogressive thought in the annals of the writings of the so-called
practical learners (sirhakcha).
Won was indubitably correct because most opponents of multiple-denomi-
nation cash believed that the public would never have confidence in the face
value of the coins in the first place, and the value of the new cash would fall pre-
cipitously. One might expect the same thing that happened in 1867 after the 100-
cash was minted, that the suspect multiple-denomination cash would drive the
trustworthy penny cash off the market - not because the latter was worthless,
but on the contrary because it retained its value and its possessors would seek
to save it rather than spend it according to Gresham's law. Yi Ik and Chong Sanggi,
both opponents of cash in whatever form, thought that the public would trust
multiple-denomination cash immediately, that it would drive "penny" coins off
the market by some process of absorption, and that the public would realize that
multiple-denomination cash was too heavy, too high in value, and too unwieldy.
All other positive advocates of multiple-denomination cash sought to preserve
cash and maximize the profits of seigniorage and solve the national shortage of
copper, while other conservatives resisted its use because they thought it would
cause inflation. Chong Sanggi and Yi Ik sought to promote its use to destroy
cash entirely. No matter how bizarre their tactics, they shared the sentiments of
other conservatives who sought to return the Korean social order to an ideal of
simplicity and purity sustained by a predominantly agricultural economy.33
Yi Ik was determined to turn back the tide of economic change to the condi-
tions of the sixteenth century. If a reversion to rice and cloth produced prob-
lems of their own, they could be remedied by using money woven of silk
temporarily. Silk would be preferable to paper because paper money soiled
quickly and could be easily counterfeited and had already failed its major prac-
tical test in the fifteenth century. Furthermore, Yi reasoned that because silk would
be too valuable to usc for small transactions, it would never catch on with the
public as a convenient medium of exchange, and as it gradually disappeared from
the market, it would be replaced by grain and cloth once again.