824 FINANCIAL REFORM AND THE ECONOMY
government allocations would remain standard even through bad harvests and
famine years. Yu also provided that such funds for purchases would also be kept
in reserve, half in cash and half in rice.
Yu expected that the purchasing masters would function as semiprivate mer-
chants rather than government officials, financed by government tax funds. All
purchases would take place in the capital for every item of consumption, down
to the smallest mustard seed. The provincial governors would likewise purchase
what they needed in the provincial capitals and would refrain from demanding
any tribute goods from the districts. Yu also warned against permitting forms of
corruption that had grown up in the tribute system, such as capital bureau clerks
illicitly rejecting tribute goods on the grounds of poor quality (chOmt'oe), or
demanding fine goods for cheap prices on the market.
Yu warned that even under the taedong system that was currently operating
in several provinces, extra allocations of tribute items in emergencies had in
fact allowed magistrates to impose extra levies on the people and opened the
door for bribes and obstruction of the flow of goods to the capital because there
were no ironclad regulations for determining purchasing agents and setting prices
in all circumstances. Permanent and binding regulations were necessary to elim-
inate all the evils that accompanied the tributary system. Provincial governors
would not be allowed to redistribute royal tribute that had been specifically
assigned to them (rather than to the districts) by demanding that the districts
pay for it. If emergencies demanded a reallocation to districts to obtain neces-
sary items, the governor would also have to hire purchasing agents to buy the
goods on the market or directly from the producer. 18
Liberal Prices as Stimulus for Market Development
Yu remarked that some people had expressed the reservation that because goods
did not circulate in the market as they did in China, even providing liberal prices
for those goods would not be sufficient to attract them to the capital, and the
bureaus would always be short of the goods that they needed. Yu conceded that
goods had not been purchased in the capital markets for some time, but he believed
that the goods had not been attracted to the capital because tribute was not being
purchased for a price. He was certain that within two or three years after the
institution of market purchases, these fears would disappear. Despite the haz-
ardous character of Korean roads, the opportunity for profit would overcome dif-
ficulties in transportation. "Once you set a price that is better [than the market
price], the people will definitely go to the place where profits are to be obtained,
and even if you wanted to prohibit them from doing so, you would not be able
to do it." Since tribute in kind had long since been replaced by substitute pur-
chases or tribute contracting called pangnap, people were already used to col-
lecting funds to buy tribute items and pay bribes.
In the case of some items that were difficult to buy in the capital, the price of
the goods in the capital would be calculated and deducted from the taxes sent by