CASH AND ECONOMIC CHANGE 969
to the population. These were the methods for securing the successful circula-
tion of cash and attaining "wealth and power" for the country.s
Yu Suwon's proposals were radical departures from conventional thought in
a number of important ways. Instead of the traditional admiration for agricul-
ture and frugality. he promoted commerce and spending as the means for pro-
moting national and popular welfare. The stimulation of spending would ensure
a more thorough circulation of cash and induce merchants into capitalizing more
ambitious ventures once they could look forward to profits from larger sales of
goods. The number of shops and commercial towns would expand, and the
demand for cash would increase, requiring the government to replace the cur-
rent money supply of coins of mixed sizes and standards with a uniform coin,
and it would have to purchase whatever raw materials were needed to achieve
this task. To ensure the viability of commercial enterprises. the state would reor-
ganize commerce by licensing all shops and combining small merchants into
larger. licensed ones, creating an oligopolistic system to allow sufficient com-
petition to eliminate market cornering by individual merchants and sufficient
profits to capitalize each enterprise. The yangban would be encouraged to engage
in commercial activity. creating a new class of educated merchants who would
then be urged to perform civic duties in welfare and local governance. In short,
Yu proposed a system of commercial, oligopolistic capitalism with a civic cul-
ture of duty and participation by a new commercial yangban class, managed
and restricted by the state to ensure profits and prevent irresponsible specula-
tion and price manipulation.
Yu Suwon's ideas would not have been possible in the seventeenth century. but
in the I730S when the Korean economy was already functioning with copper cur-
rency despite the shortage of money and the reduction of commercial profits by
increased competition hom private merchants, his solutions were a logical, albeit
unusual, rcsponse to cUlTent problems. At the same time, the untaxed yangban,
augmented by tax evaders seeking to escape the military cloth support tax, would
be converted into productive citizens by opening the doors to profitable com-
mercial enterprise to them. It is not clear whether his writings had much influ-
ence on his contemporaries or subsequent generations, but at the least he
anticipated Pak Chega's promotion of commercial activity by a half century.
COMBATING ANOTHER CASH SHORTAGE. 1742
Even though the money supply expanded after 173 I, King YOngjo was not as
fully committed as Yu Suwon to the expansion of commerce and the steady expan-
sion of cash in circulation by an annual minting quota. It may not be possible
to estimate the national money supply for Korea after '73 T, but it probably bore
some correlation to the increase in the central government's cash receipts and
disbursements. As table " shows, the central government's annual cash rev-
enues advanced steadily from about 82,000 yang in '700 to about 120,000 yang
in 1727, and jumped suddenly to near 200,000 yang in 1731. It apparently