784 FINANCIAL REFORM AND THE ECONOMY
the Taedong Agency (Taedongch'ong) to defray the cost for purchasing tribute
items needed by capital bureaus, remuneration for the costs of specific service
(kiin), clerks, and mnners, and paper for the Ministry of Rites and the Direc-
torate of Astronomy (Kwansanggam). The remainder of the taedong (five or six
mal/k)'(il) revenues would be retained in the province to pay for royal tribute,
ordinary tribute items levied in kind, medicine for the Palace Physicians' Court
(Naeuiw6n), goods consumed by the magistrates, and horse transport costs. In
short, this proposal represented a major step in simplifying and rationalizing
the state's system of finance by replacing the poorly regulated levies of tribute,
official expenses, and labor service with a simple land surtax.
Early in 1624, the secret censor (Amhaeng osa) for ChOlla Province, Chang
Yu, cautioned the king against the possible loss of transport vessels at sea and
theft by the transport sailors, and warned that local districts might have to be
taxed a second time to replenish the losses. Since the taedong land surtax was
too low, revenues would be insufficient to allow local districts to buy what they
needed. Furthermore, the costs of horse transport and personal fees were not
included in the revenue calculations.^22
Before King Injo could decide on the merits of these complaints, however, Yi
Kwal's rebellion broke out and wrecked the operation of the taedong system.
To alleviate the financial difficulties of the peasants after the rebellion, the gov-
ernment then cut the taedong tax rate to four mat/kyot, but at the cost of ade-
quate funding to replace tribute and uncompensated labor service. Except for
taedong taxes collected already, the rest of the provinces involved in the reform
were allowed to revert to tribute payments in kind, a system cynically dubbed
"the half-taedong" system. Peasants naturally resented this immediate reversal
of government policy even though it was designed to benefit them, but Chief
State Councilor Yi Won'ik, who had recommended the taedong system for
Kyonggi Province in [608, explained that famine conditions had rendered the
system inoperable. The devastating effects of the rebellion on the taedong reform
is important because it meant that the delay in extending the taedong system to
the rest of the country was caused by an extraneous circumstance unrelated to
the capacity of the Chos6n government's capacity for institutional reform.
In r624, Ch'oe Myonggil, one of the leaders of the Injo Restoration coup in
1623, made a blistering attack in the Royal Lectures on the bookish and inept
work ofYi Won'ik and Cho Ik, who had drawn up the taedong regulations. He
asked that the system be abolished, and proposed that additional revenue be raised
instead by adopting the household tally system (hop'ae) and requiring cloth tax
payments from the sons and younger brothers of yangban.
Ch'oe My6nggil argued that since the majority of the people in the capital and
major towns were opposed to the taedong system, tribute should be restored but
prices of tribute goods in contracting arrangements revised downward to pre-
vent profiteering from substitutions oftribute goods. In other words. he wanted
to recognize tribute contracting as a legal operation but legislate prices charged
by the tribute middlemen, a proposal that would have been almost impossible