CONFUCIAN STATECRAFT 31Ii shed two agencies to control them - the Kyongsigam (Directorate of the Cap-
ital Markets) to regulate prices, prevent cheating, control thievery, and collect
merchant taxes, and the Directorate of Sanitation (Ch'ongjegam) to maintain the
cleanliness of the market areas. The state completed the construction of ninety-
one sijon (market shops) on both sides of the streets in these areas by I4 I 4 to
provide for the needs of the capital residents. In the provinces the authorities
established fixed markets on certain days of the week - usually five days a month
- so that a network of markets separated by 30-40 i or one-day's travel and ser-
viced by itinerant merchants and peddlers (pohusang) was created nation-wide,
but there were no permanent markets in the countryside until changmun mar-
kets began to appear in ChOlla Province after a famine in 1470.12 Commission
agents called y/'jgaek and kaekchu acted as intermediaries for the sale of goods
or sold goods on consignment from their warehouses, made loans, and set up
grog shops and hostels for entertaining merchants and travelcrs for which they
were paid commissions for their services. 1.1
In short, government policy at the beginning of the Chason dynasty was
designed to control permanent markets in the new and old capitals by bringing
all the permanent and large-scale merchants into a restrictive area and control-
ling their shops and operations, and to prevent the development of market towns
with permanent shops by allowing only peddlers to handle commerce in the
provinces. 14
Since foreign trade was subjected to a number of constraints in the Choson
dynasty, it also failed to act as a major stimulus to economic development. Those
constraints were the result ofYi Songgye's decision to enroll as a tributary of
the Ming emperor and accept the rules and regulations of the tributary rela-
tionship.I5
Trade with China was legally restricted to authorized tribute missions even
though some merchants were able to accompany the diplomats. Under the rubric
of tribute, however, trade was conducted in the export of Korean horses and
oxen in return for ramie and cotton. At first private trade with Chinese envoys
visiting Korea was forbidden. but after 1442 King Sejong allowed merchants
to trade ramie, hemp, sealskins, ginseng, sandalwood, alum, and pepper, for
silk gauze. 16 This was a step forward toward greater foreign trade, but a very
small step nonetheless. Since no free passage across the Yalu River was allowed,
smuggling was the only way that trade could take place outside the legal frame-
work, and it remained limited in scope until the seventeenth century.
Trade with Japan was also limited by restrictions imposed on the number of
authorized ships that could call at authorized ports (at first two, then three after
1426 - Tongnae, Ongch'on, and Ulsan - until the Imjin War of 1592), and by
the disruption caused by the Wako pirates through the middle of the fifteenth
century. Since the Korean authorities themselves, and not the Ming overlords,
imposed these limitations on the Japanese traders, it would appear that the early
Choson kings preferred security to any prosperity that could be gained from
expanded trade.