CASH AND ECONOMIC CHANGE 987
believed that the role of commerce was secondary to agriculture, and the latter
would have been discomfited by the toleration of private merchant business
because he wanted to organize all small merchants into larger units and create
oligopolies in major products,
The government's solution after Ch'ae Chegong's joint or open sales policy
of 1791 and 1794 was to cut back the scope of licensed monopolies and create
more opportunity for free trade, but the prospect of bankrupty in an atmosphere
of freer (if not totally free) trade stimulated a reactionary demand for state pro-
tection. There was no total solution to the problem, neither an advance to totally
free market conditions nor reversion to licensed monopoly sales for the capital
and major towns. As a result, commercial competition by both licensed and unli-
censed shops, some large wholesalers and some petty merchants, continued to
the end of the nineteenth century.
THE EXPANSION OF CASH AFTER 1785
The decline of licensed monopolies and the growth of private merchant activi-
ties in the late eighteenth century indubitably fueled greater demand for cash.
King Yongjo had always been reluctant to mint more cash, but his death in 1776
removed an obstacle to expansion of the cash supply. In 1785 King Chongjo
decided to mint cash on a more regular basis (five times between 1785 and 1798),
and he authorized an annual import of 50-60,000 yang of copper from Japan
to provide the raw material for the cash.
One is bound to wonder whether Yu Hyongwon's advocacy of reliance on
Japanese imports for copper ore had some effect on Chongjo's thinking because
Yu's Pan 'gye surok was first published with an introduction by the govemor of
Kyongsang Province in 1770, and in the early 1780s Yi Man'un was working
under the king's order on the revision of the Munhonbigo encyclopedia of Korean
institutions. In his revised text Yi quoted Yu's arguments on the advantages of
cash in the Pan 'gye sllrok.
The gist ofYu's argument was as follows: that it was absolutely necessary for
any country to use cash because it would provide more resources for state expen-
ditures and improve the living standards of the people. Korea was the only coun-
try in the world that had not been using cash (when Yu lived), but there was no
reason why this should be so since Koreans were no different from the people
of other countries: they all cultivated land, had the same tastes, and supported
themselves by trading what they produced for things they did not produce them-
selves. Since Korea had the capacity to adopt the use of cash. the only reason
why it had failed to do so was the inability of Korean kings to provide leader-
ship and guidance for its circulation. While King Sukchong of the Koryo
dynasty sought to promote the circulation of cash by paying cash out to officials
and soldiers, and establishing wine shops to accept cash payments. he and oth-
ers who wanted to stimulate the exchange of cash in Korea failed to understand