TRIBUTE AND THE TAEDONG REFORM 793but he changed his mind and decided in favor of a rate that was more than three
times larger because he wanted to make sure he could cover all costs and not
have to raise the rate again.
Of course, he was urged on not only by Kim Yuk, but Cho Tk. Min Unghyong,
Yi Sibang, Ho Chok. and some of the censors, but he also had to defy the oppo-
sition of Ch'oe Myonggil, Won Tup'yo, Cho Sogyun. Kim Chip, and last but not
least, the strong supporter of his anti-Manchu policy, Song Siyol.'Y By no means
was Hyojong willing or able to impose his decision on a court whose opinion
was split on the issue, but it would be a disservice to describe him as a weak
king because his support was ultimately crucial in reversing policy. The deci-
sion represented a noble victory for the reform wing of bureaucrats in the gov-
ernment.
Implementation of the decision would not prove to be that easy because the
official Hyojong appointed to administer the taedong tax resigned in opposi-
tion. When Hyojong chose Minister of Taxation Won Tup'yo to take over that
responsibility, it could have been interpreted as a sly method of ensuring the
failure of the taedol1g system because Won had previously been opposed to it.
Kim Yuk was incensed by this choice and accused Won of being so determined
to win his way that he would never carry out any policy he disliked. Kim had
little respect for Won's talents and accused him of violating the chain of com-
mand by never once meeting with him to discuss methods of implementation.
King Hyojong defended his appointment of Won, and even after he dismissed
him, he appointed him to an important post in the Taedong office, presumably
because he must have expected that top officials would abandon their own per-
sonal views to carry out his commands.^40
Nonetheless. there were many critics of the law. Yi Sibang said it might work
for the coastal region, but not for the hilly or upland area. Although Kim Yuk
argued that the cloth tax was only equivalent to two p 'il per kwil, he had to con-
cede that if the peasants did not weave cloth, they would have to buy cloth with
rice to meet their taedong c loth taxes at a price of more than twel ve mal per p' it
of cloth (instead of the current exchange rate of five mal per p 'il set in the Tae-
dong regulations) after a bumper crop and a drop in rice prices. But Kim also
concluded that this problem could be eliminated by requiring a cash payment
instead of rice (for upland peasants who did not weave cloth). Kim, of course,
had been the leading advocate of introducing copper cash into the economy as
a major medium of exchange, but this idea was a generation in advance of his
time and the use of cash instead of cloth was not adopted until King Sukchong's
reign in the late seventeenth century.41
Ch611a Coastal Districts, r658
King Hyojong's adoption of the taedong system for Ch'ungch'ong. however, did
not cow its opponents into silence. In 1652, the fourth censor (Chong'on) of the
Office of Censor-General, Yi Man'ung, attacked two of Kim Yuk's favorite mea-