788 FINANCIAL REFORM AND THE ECONOMYland surtax would pay not only for royal and regular tribute, but also for war-
ships, horse transportation, and magistrates' yamen expenses - and still yield
an extra twenty or thirty thousand sam surplus. He regretted that Kwon Pun's
plan had not been adopted when he was governor even though the district mag-
istrates all favored the idea, and he asserted that the taedong system would free
the peasants from hard labor and the excessive demands of officials. The Bor-
der Defense Command agreed with Kim's arguments but refused to support it
because, contrary to Kim's claims, the tax rate would be too low to pay all the
costs involved.
Kim initially proposed a rate divided into cloth and grain portions: one p'il
of cloth and two mal of rice per kyol of land. Since he calculated the value of
one p' il of cloth at five mal of rice, the tax rate calculated in grain would have
been equivalent to seven mal/kyol. The close advisers of the king, however, had
asked that the tax be based on a formula of two p'il/kyol, which at the current
rate of exchange at five mal/p'il would have been equivalent to ten mal of rice.
Kim pointed out, however, that since the relative values of rice and cloth var-
ied according to the size of the crop, any year in which a bumper rice crop flooded
the market with rice the cost in rice of purchasing cotton cloth for paying the
tax would automatically rise and impose a hardship on the peasantry. He argued
that he had purposely intended that combining rice and cloth in the tax rate would
take care of variations of supply and price by creating an "equal" or uniform
tax rate that would still guarantee sufficient revenue for the state. He held that
his current evaluation of the value of one p' il of cloth at five mal of rice was
nothing more than a reflection of current prices, but he was willing to counte-
nance adoption of the higher tax rate (two p 'il of cloth costing ten mal of rice
on the market, rather than his seven mal equivalent) proposed by the Royal Lec-
tures temporarily (presumably to ensure sufficient revenue) and wait until the
next good harvest to adopt his method to prevent a bumper crop and a cheap
rice price from alienating the taxpayers.
The Border Defense Command then responded by saying that it had reviewed
the equivalent value (chOlka) of (tribute?) taxes sent from Ch'ungch'ong with
the expenditures of the Ministry of Taxation and found that the equivalent value
of receipts from the taedong reform would have been quite close to expendi-
tures at Kim's suggested rate, but it would not have covered the miscellaneous
taxes or costs (chabyok) as well as the cost of tribute. The ministry, therefore,
implied that since Kim Yuk's estimates of revenue from a taedong reform would
fall short of revenues, the government would have to impose a (higher) rate that
taxpayers would not support.
Furthermore, the ministry did not approve of switching back and forth from
the higher rate advocated by the Royal Lectures to Kim's rate, presumably because
the public might think that the government was switching rates to manipulate
market prices for its own advantage. In any case, it would be important to revise
the tribute ledgers (kong 'an) first, and then discuss the possibilities of the tae-
dong system later on. King Injo decided not to adopt Kim Yuk's proposal for