CASH AND ECONOMIC CHANGE 993
should take action to prevent the flight of silver from Korea by closing off the
China trade. The government should reduce the number of people authorized
to travel to Yenching on tribute missions and ban the export of silver to China
as well as forbid the import from China of any products other than medicines.
Even though Pak believed in the utility of currency and was more "advanced"
in his ideas on the money supply than Yu Hyongwon had been a century before,
the large outflow of silver frightened him because he perceived it as an exchange
of real wealth for production of goods of no utility to meet the frivolous demands
of Korean consumers. Won Yuhan has praised these ideas for manifesting a
nationalistic spirit, but if so, it was the nationalism of the modern mercantilist
or protectionist rather than the free trader. Like Pak Chega, he favored the devel-
opment of roads and transport vehicles to expand the distribution of articles of
local production throughout Korea, but he was afraid of the consequences of
foreign trade because he really could not envision any potential for the devel-
opment of an export market, no matter what his hero, Master Ho, had to say in
the Hosaengjon.3R
Pak also wrote elsewhere that the Korean government should prohibit private
minting, maintain exclusive government control over the minting of cash, and
reject the idea of importing Ch'ing cash. He suspected that the last idea reflected
the hopes of the official Korean interpreters who expected to turn at least a 600
percent profit on the purchase of cheaper Chinese cash, and he objected to it
because Korean currency was already too irregular and confused. The coins first
minted in 1678 weighed. I 2 yang each, but in 1679 the weight was doubled to
.25 yang and treated as equivalent to two of the original coins, and this 2-cash
coin, or "old cash" (kujon), was the best of all coins minted after that. A second
type called the cash of the three military divisions (samyijngjijll) were minted
around the middle of the century and had much less copper and were smaller in
size, the worst type of coins put into circulation. The copper content of coins
minted in this period were .20 yang, in 1742, .17 yang in 1752, .12 yang in 1753,
and .12 yang around 1810. Finally, the coins minted in King Chongjo's era after
1776, called "new cash" (sinjon), were better in quality, but eventually all three
types of coin circulated at the same face value. Pak insisted that the highest qual-
ity "old cash" be taken as the standard for the "penny," that the value of "new
cash" be cut to half the value of "old cash:' and that the use of the "three mili-
tary division cash" and all other coins of poor quality be prohibited. By this means
the government could restore public confidence in the currency.39
Both Won Yuhan and Kwon Yong'ik have claimed that Pak Chiwon's ideas
on currency were a product of his own nationalistic self-consciousness. K won
explained that the key concept of his monetary wisdom was that only goods or
products had real utility because they satisfied the desire for existence, whereas
cash only had relative economic value because it functioned as a means of weigh-
ing and balancing the value of products. Although he regarded agriculture as
fundamental to the economy, he did not ignore or degrade cash and commerce.