780 FINANCIAL REFORM AND THE ECONOMYtribute sent to the capital from an average of seven to eight mal/kyO! to a uni-
form two mallkyi5/, which was supposed to yield an annual revenue of 70,000
sam, greater than the 60,000 sam collected from the land tax. When the actual
receipts proved to be only 50,000 sam, it became clear that the new tribute sur-
tax had not been applied thoroughly and peasants were not able to pay full taxes.
Since land under cultivation was not resurveyed until J 604. it could not be
expected that a land surtax would yield its full potential.
Critics of the system claimed that two mal/kyol was still too heavy a tax in
wartime, especially when transportation costs, personal fees (or bribes), and a
half-dozen other types of land levies were also being charged by magistrates.
Capital merchants were hard pressed to find the goods demanded by capital
bureau clerks, especially at the low prices offered by them, while the govern-
ment had difficulty paying the costs for Chinese envoys and the rations for Chi-
nese troops stationed in Korea. The revenues from the low land surtax were too
low to replace the profits made by clerks, runners, and slaves, and the adminis-
trative costs of local as well as capital officials. The beneficiaries of corruption
and illegal tribute contracting joined forces in opposing the new law, and King
Sonja abolished Yu S6ngny6ng's reform, probably in J 599. [7
The Taedong System/or Kyonggi Province, 1608Yu Hyongwon reported that in 1608, Han Paekkyom charged that tribute col-
lected from the people had grown so large and oppressive that the viability of
the dynasty was threatened. He also commented that Han explained that Yu
Songnyong's reform in 1594 had not been rescinded in 1599 because the law
itself was flawed, but because of anomalies in the application of the law. While
a land surtax rate of two mal/kyol to finance the replacement of tribute in Kyonggi
Province had been extremely light for coastal districts that shipped their tax pay-
ments to the capital by boat, the taxpayers in the more remote and mountain-
ous (upland) regions were burdened by the cost of transporting the tax to the
capital and other government offices. Transportation cost more than three times
the tax itself. Merchants and shopkeepers in the capital resented the demands
of capital bureau clerks to lower the prices of goods the government purchased
from them in place of tribute items.
Furthermore, because the reform was first adopted soon after the king and his
court returned to the capital when there was a shortage of goods available in the
shops, the government reintroduced special tribute levies in kind on the peas-
ants, who regarded this measure as a form of double taxation. What had been
advertised as a means of lowering tax rates and creating a uniform and equi-
table rate then appeared to have become only a subterfuge for heavier taxes.
Finally, local officials opposed the system because the government did not abide
by its new method and had lost the trust of the people in the reliability of the
laws, and the clerks and runners naturally resented the reform because they had
lost their opportunities for illicit profits under the previous pangnap system. Han