9S8 FINANCIAL REFORM AND THE ECONOMY
that half the granary funds were supposed to be kept on reserve, and rice reserves
in military granaries had not been kept intact either. The Office of Benefiting
the People in the capital was then left with no more than 40 to SO,OOO som for
use throughout the year, but he estimated that its reserve should be totally depleted
after two or three sales were made by next spring. He also recommended using
cash and cloth to save using government rice and grain, even though he real-
ized that YOngjo strongly objected to it.
Yongjo noted that if he decided to mint more cash, he could at least be cer-
tain that because cash still retained a high value on the market, it would be easy
to get soldiers and merchants who provided tribute goods to accept government
cash payments in lieu of grain. Kim Chaero warned him, however, that there
would be problems after minting was carried out and the value of cash was dri-
ven down. Ordinarily I som (IS mal) of rice could be bought for only 3 yang
of cash (S mal/yang), but now it took S yang (3 mal/yang, a somewhat better
price than Song Inmyong's report) to buy the same amount. It took this kind of
crisis to move YOngjo to abandon his previous policy and agree to authorize mint-
ing additional cash for the first time since 1696, but he took the action reluc-
tantly as a temporary measure to provide emergency relief.35
Song Chinmyong and Multiple-Denomination CoinsNonetheless, the shortage of copper must have inspired some officials concerned
by the high value of cash to think of better ways to economize on the cost of
increasing the money supply. The two most economical alternatives in that age
were paper money and multiple-denomination cash (i.e., nickels, dimes, and
quarters rather than pennies), but paper money had many detractors, and peo-
ple like Yu Hyongwon believed that ordinary people would never believe that
multiple-denomination cash would be honored at its face value.
After mints were reestablished in 173 I, however, Second Minister of Taxa-
tion Song Chinmyong attempted to overcome the traditional prejudice against
multiple-denomination cash by defending its utility in rational and logical terms.
In tracing the history of currency in Korea, he noted that paper and cloth had
been used for brief periods of time and then abandoned when certain problems
developed in their use, but that experience did not invalidate their utility because
in China metallic currency had been used without interruption for over two mil-
lennia because any difficulties that had emerged were solved by reforms or
changes in the system. In Korea, however, when any problem associated with
the use of cash appeared, people were ready to abolish it immediately, "like some-
one who stopped eating just because he got something stuck in his throat" - a
rather daring and dangerous parody on the attitude of King YOngjo himself.
Song then moved on to his justification for multiple-denomination coins by
pointing out that King Ching of the Chou dynasty (r. 544-520 B.c.) and Liu Pa
had used a lOo-cash coin, as did Chu-ko Liang of the Wei state (third century
A.D.). The only difference between "large" and "small" cash was that one was