TRIBUTE AND THE TAEDONG REFORM 801cial offices and the Ever-Normal Bureau (Sangp'yongch'ong). The staff officers
(Nangch 'ong) were placed in direct charge of running these agencies.^59
Of the 13 I A90 kyo/ of cultivated land taxed in Ch'ungch'ong Province in 1652,
6,673 ky61 of tax exempt land (kuppokch6n or pokho) used to pay funds for the
king's palace expenses, honored exemplars of morality, post-stations, ferries,
and the like, was deducted from the taedong tax rolls, leaving 124,746 ky61 of
taxable land (thereafter an annual average of I 24,000 ky61). This exemption from
the law was an important modification of the principle of fair and equal distri-
bution. but the amount was not large at the outset. The total taedong revenue
for the province that year was 83,164 s6m (or I ,247A60 mal), of which 58 per-
cent (48,280 s6m) was remitted to the capital for the purchase of former tribute
items, 36.8 percent (30,922 slim) was kept in the provinces to meet yamen
expenses, salaries, and other costs, and 4.7 percent (3,962 s6m) was set aside to
defray maritime and overland transport costs. To alleviate the burden on small
districts that could not meet their tax quotas for capital tribute purchases, sur-
pluses were collected from large districts to make up the difference.^60
In Cholla Province the taedong surtax was levied on about 200,000 kyoi a year
of taxable land (silky()l) in 1662, yielding revenues of [47, [34 s6m, of which
61,218 sam (41.6 percent) was remitted to the capital. and 61,218 s6m (58-4
percent) was retained in the province - a proportion almost the reverse of the
pattern in Ch'ungch'ong. In ChOlia Province, the first half of the tax payment (6
mal/ky61) was due in the spring and was sent to the capital to pay for tribute pur-
chases and other capital expenses, but any shortages of revenues needed in the
capital was supplemented from large districts that had a surplus. The second tax
payment (seven ma/lky6l) was retained in the province. Evidently for the cal-
culation of the total value of taedong revenues, cloth payments were converted
to units of account in rice (mal).61
Han Yongguk has called attention to interprovincial discrimination in the tae-
dong tax. Under the tribute system Ch'ungch'ong Province paid 83.3 percent of
the amount of tribute that ChOlla paid (exclusive of special tribute and personal
labor service costs) even though Ch'ungch'ong had only 55.5 percent ofthe pop-
ulation and 7 I -4 percent of the land in Cholla. Han estimated that Ch'ungch'ong
should only have paid 62.5 percent of Cholla's tribute (1/1.6, the average between
the population and land ratios for the two provinces).62
The cost of purchasing tribute items for shipment to China was, of course.
quite onerous after the second Manchu invasion of 1637. Initially Korea had to
send IOO vang of gold, 10,000 yang of silver and 20 other articles. The amount
and type of tribute to the Ch'ing court was reduced in 1647. 1654, and 171 [,
and in the last year gold and silver was eliminated, but even in the eighteenth
century more than thirty kinds of goods were sent.
Of the 56,889 siJm of grain sent to the capital from Cholla Province in 1662,
1,66 [ s6m was spent to purchase quality paper, 9,333 s6m (actually half in cloth
and half in rice) for large and small quality cotton cloth for tribute to the Ch' ing